


"the breath that passed (from you to me)"

by cjscullyjanewaygay (csiwholocked33), talkwordytome



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff, Hilda Spellman is a BAMF, Hurt/Comfort, I was reading Circe by Madeline Miller when I wrote this, Mentions of self-harm, Nightmares, Past Sexual Assault, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Hilda, Protective Sabrina, References to gore, Spellwell - Freeform, Trauma, Which I think contributed to some of the melodrama, Zelda Spellman is gay and so am I lads, and we do NOT sanction his buffoonery, in this house we do NOT support faustus blackwood, post-season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:29:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23364736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/csiwholocked33/pseuds/cjscullyjanewaygay, https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkwordytome/pseuds/talkwordytome
Summary: “Now all the days of beggingThe days of theftNo more gasping for a breathThe air has filled me head-to-toeAnd I can see the ground far belowI have this breathAnd I hold it tightAnd I keep it in my chestWith all my might”--Florence + the Machine, “Between Two Lungs”or: in which the witch Zelda Spellman & the mortal woman Mary Wardwell search for healing, & find each other.
Relationships: Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith, Zelda Spellman/Original Mary Wardwell
Comments: 39
Kudos: 117





	1. "like a bullet in the back"

**Author's Note:**

> As promised, here is the angstier, multi-chapter Spellwell fic!
> 
> So, I'm aware this fic sort of ret-cons Marie & Zelda getting together at the end of s3. I personally love the two of them as a couple & love the fics I've read of them; I just worry about trying to write Marie in a way that feels authentic and not culturally appropriative (which, tbh, is something the show itself seemed to struggle with). I've been writing little bits and pieces of Marie/Zelda fic here & there, just as practice, & if I ever start to feel like I'm capturing her voice and her characterization I'll post something!
> 
> A certain girlfriend of mine {cjscullyjanewaygay (csiwholocked33)} is co-writing this fic with me, which means the update turnaround won't be quite as quick as my pre-canon series; she has her own life going on, y'know!
> 
> Title comes from the song "Between Two Lungs" by Florence + the Machine! 
> 
> We own neither CAOS nor its characters.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And I never wanted anything from you  
>  Except everything you had  
> And what was left after that too, oh.  
> Happiness hit her like a bullet in the back  
> Struck from a great height  
> By someone who should know better than that_  
> \--Florence + the Machine, "Dog Days Are Over"
> 
> In which Zelda Spellman receives a surprise visitor, and begins to discover things about herself she's never known.

It’s raining, as it has been for the past three days. Greendale is often rainy in October, but this is not the fine, gentle mist that always seems to accompany the leaves as they change and the woodsmoke that drifts from chimneys: this is a fierce, lashing rain—the sort that blurs windows like the warped bottoms of hand-blown glasses—that brings to mind great biblical floods. Zelda has begun to idly wonder if, perhaps, it will rain this way forever; if, perhaps, it is only raining like this in Greendale, their own strange and ethereal little pocket of the mortal realm. The old house is draughty and she can hear the wind whistling her tragic song. All the fires and blankets and hot toddies in the world can’t seem to chase the chill from her bones. Everything aches, and she is so very tired.

She keeps busy, because Zelda Spellman has always had an innate knack for being busy. She is not like Hilda, content to bake and sew and read curled up in a favorite chair; she needs to move, to do, to make. There is no shortage of things for her to move and do and make, of course. She is the High Priestess of a coven that wants for ground-up rebuilding. There is the Academy to run, governing texts to revise, outdated traditions to overturn—it is work at which she excels, and that was always fulfilling enough, until—well, until suddenly wasn’t anymore. 

Zelda Spellman has always had an innate knack for being restless, too, but this is a different kind of restlessness. This is a restlessness pointed inward, a heart that beats endless quiet reminders that she is missing _something, something, something_. She thinks, sometimes, of Sabrina losing baby teeth when she was a little girl; how she would endlessly poke and prod at the dark, tiny chasm left behind. 

“But it feels so _weird_ ,” she would whine when Zelda would chide her to keep her fingers away from her mouth. “And how else can I be sure that the grown-up tooth is coming in? How does it _know_?”

Zelda had never liked fielding those questions, had always left them to Hilda, because how _do_ teeth know to grow? How _do_ bones know to mend? How _do_ cuts know to scar? How is it that a body can know, and know, and know, until—finally—it is confounded by a question for which there is no clear answer?

It is October in Greendale, and it is raining like the world is about to end, and someone is knocking on Zelda Spellman’s door.

When Zelda first opens the door she’s sure she must be dreaming, improbable a guest as a soaked, shivering Mary Wardwell is. The startled witch blinks and pulls her robe more tightly around her body, suddenly painfully aware of what she is wearing (pajamas), and what she is not (make-up), and that, of all absurd, irritating things, she is fighting off what promises to be a particularly nasty cold. Irritating, but not wholly unexpected; little things—colds and headaches, sore throats and dizzy spells—have become a stubborn part of Zelda’s life over the last year. The coven had long since regained its full powers, but Zelda knows better than most the ways in which bodies remember the battles they’ve fought. 

“Sabrina isn’t home,” Zelda says in lieu of a greeting. Mary stares back at Zelda, apparently unphased, which only serves to irk Zelda further. Her dark, wild curls are pulled into a low bun, save for a few loose strands blowing about her face. Her cheeks are pink from the frigid air. “Did you walk here?” Zelda asks, looking Mary up and down without pretense or shame.

“Oh, yes, I suppose I did,” Mary says in that vague, dreamy way she has, as though she is present in body only. 

“Well, that was certainly foolish of you,” Zelda says tartly, even as something in her resolve is softening very much against her will. “You’ll catch cold, no doubt, and you’ll be lucky if you don’t get pneumonia.”

“Oh no, dear, I’m sure I’ll be alright, I’m just…” she trails off and sneezes discreetly into her elbow.

Zelda, vindicated but also unexpectedly concerned about this strange, damp woman, arches a pale eyebrow. 

Mary cocks her head to the side and gazes pensively at Zelda with startlingly blue eyes. Zelda fights against the compulsion to squirm. “Do you ever feel,” Mary says, with an abrupt clarity so sharp and bright that Zelda nearly jumps, “that the universe is compelling you to do something? Even if you’re not quite sure what it is?”

“No,” Zelda answers, although the answer is a resounding _yes, constantly, almost every waking moment since the Church of Night collapsed_. 

Mary Wardwell is standing there on her front porch, looking for all the world like a pathetic, bedraggled, half-drowned kitten, and the universe is compelling Zelda Spellman to do _something, something, something_.

And what Zelda Spellman does, finally, is open the door just an inch wider and crook an exasperated finger in an unspoken invitation. “I’ll put the kettle on for some tea,” she says, and she does not need to look back to know that Mary is following her.

~~~

There is a fire going in the hearth and Mary has changed into a sweater (Zelda’s) and pair of flannel pajama bottoms (Hilda’s), both of which swallow the smaller woman, though she doesn’t seem to mind. Zelda toasts a few slices of bread while she waits for the water to boil and gets butter and jam from the refrigerator. The house is empty but for the two of them, and Zelda has to admit that there is something so undeniably _nice_ about this shared, quiet domesticity. She doesn’t often experience moments so intimate with people who aren’t Hilda, but it doesn’t make her nearly so nervous as she would have anticipated.

Zelda is getting plates for the food just as the kettle begins to whistle. She pours the steaming water into two mugs and dips a satchel of lavender tea into each. They’re soothing, these small acts, and she’s almost forgotten that Mary is even there when she says: “I didn’t come to see Sabrina.” She pauses, as if considering, then, “Earlier, when you answered the door, you said that Sabrina wasn’t home. But she’s not the reason I’m here. In case you were wondering.” Her hands flutter nervously as she speaks, and Zelda is reminded of the delicate birds Sabrina liked to draw when she was younger. 

Zelda busies herself arranging the plates so she doesn’t have to immediately respond. She sets one in front of Mary and one for herself. She gets honey and cream for their tea and spoons to stir it, knives for the butter and the jam. She swirls the lavender satchel around her mug and stares at Mary, long and hard and searching.

“So then why,” Zelda finally asks, “are you here?”

Mary exhales and adds quite a lot of cream to her tea with shaky hands. Zelda pushes away a brief, bizarre instinct to steady those pale, anxious hands in her own. “The last twelve months, they’ve been….” Mary begins, but falters, then tries again. “I mean, they haven’t been; that is, I can’t... I’m _missing_ so much of them.” She adds an equally absurd amount of honey to her cup and begins to stir it in as she continues. “There are just… huge blank expanses of time that I _know_ I filled, somehow, but I can’t—I don’t,” she pauses, eyes threatening to seep over, her mouth and chin quivering. “There’s this strange… voice, or something, within me that keeps insisting that the Spellmans would have answers, that— _you_ would have answers.” 

She fixes her eyes on a point somewhere beyond Zelda’s left ear. “I kept ignoring it because it was just so… _utterly_ ridiculous; I don’t know you, so how would you know anything about what’s happened to me?” Her breath catches on a ragged sob like fabric snagged on a sharp nail. “But I’ve been having nightmares, such _awful_ nightmares, and I—I just don’t know what else to do.”

She places her face in her hands and cries, tears dripping down her cheeks and onto her borrowed sweater. Zelda is stunned, first into inaction and then action. Before her mind can question what her body has decided to do, she is sitting next to Mary and rubbing soothing circles onto her scapulae; it is pure instinct, born of comforting Sabrina when she woke in the night crying out for her mother and father. It feels right and good, an old warm memory being shaped into something new. 

“I’m so scared,” Mary whispers through sobs, and something deep and primal inside of Zelda throbs with pity, with an inexplicable need to protect this silly mortal woman. “I’m scared all the time, and I don’t even know what it is I’m scared _of_.”

Zelda intends to answer, but sneezes instead. She’s blowing her nose into a lace handkerchief she’d stored up her sleeve when she notices Mary’s tear-streaked face staring at her with an expression of such genuine distress that she nearly laughs. 

“You’re sick,” Mary says, her voice full of worry and something else, something that Zelda can’t exactly place but that soothes her from the inside out.

“I’ve never been sick a day in my life,” Zelda says tiredly, but Mary shakes her head, causing wispy, errant curls to fly about her face and temples.

“You have a cold,” Mary says firmly, revealing a side of herself that Zelda hasn’t been privy to but finds she rather likes. “You shouldn’t be out of bed on a night like this. Oh!” she exclaims, eyes widening to almost comic effect, “and here I am, imposing, being a dreadful guest, making you sit at the table when you and your tea should be snuggled under the blankets.”

Mary grabs Zelda gently by the shoulders and leads her from the kitchen to the living room; Zelda is too surprised to argue, despite the sensible half of her brain loudly informing her that she _should_ be arguing, should’ve sent this oddly dear little mortal on her way ages ago. But Zelda is exhausted, and Mary’s touch is warm, and she finds she can’t quite bring herself to care.

Mary fluffs the pillows and covers Zelda with every blanket, taking special care to tuck them in around Zelda’s toes. She briefly palms Zelda’s forehead, quick enough that Zelda doesn’t have time to wince away from her. “I think you have a touch of fever,” Mary says.

“You don’t have to do this,” Zelda says, the sensible part of her brain rebooting even as she tries to shut it back off. “I’ll be fine; I need sleep, that’s all.”

“But I want to do this,” Mary says, a bit desperately. “Please. Please let me. I’m good at this—taking care of people—and I’ve been… unmoored, as of late. And this… this will make me feel grounded, I think. Grounded, and whole, and properly…” she exhales, “properly normal.”

“Well,” Zelda says softly, “who am I to argue with that?”

The smile Mary responds with is trembling but brave and full of thanks, and Zelda finds that she has to look away from such transparent gratitude when it is directed at her. “What do you need?” Mary asks sweetly, then frowns. “Please don’t tell me you’re one of those people who’ll suffer and suffer before they give in and take cold medicine.”

A sly smile ghosts Zelda’s lips. “Do I _seem_ like one of those people?” she asks dryly.

Mary blushes a most becoming shade of rosy pink. “Well,” she says with a touch of wry humor of her own, “only a little.”

Zelda laughs. “I will say that we’re not really ones for,” here she pauses and considers her next words carefully, “ _over the counter_ remedies in this house. My sister Hilda is something of an, mmm, herbalist in her spare time. She’s rather gifted at it, actually, and we have tonics and balms and the like that work wonders for any number of minor maladies.”

“Fascinating,” breathes Mary. “Oh, I’ve always wanted to learn about herbalism. I’m quite a gardener in the warmer months, and naturally I cook and bake with what I grow, but using it to _heal_ sounds so spectacularly lovely.”

Zelda hums her agreement and settles deeper into her blanket cocoon. She’s realizing that she doesn’t mind at all, really, letting someone else care for her, or perhaps it’s just that Mary is as good at it as she promised. She sneezes once, twice, and then a third time for good measure. Mary pouts at her, and Zelda can’t resist a pathetic pout of her own now that the universe has granted her its permission to admit she feels dreadful. Mary joins her tentatively on the chaise, and when Zelda doesn’t object, she moves a little closer. 

The next several hours pass in a strangely comfortable calm; they watch the second half of _It Happened One Night_ on the classic movies channel and then all of _The Philadelphia Story_. (Hilda may tease Zelda for being old-fashioned, and she’s probably right to do so, but Zelda will happily admit that films are one of the better modern inventions of the last 300 years.) Mary refills Zelda’s tea when it runs low, and brings her fresh handkerchiefs any time she needs them, which is embarrassingly often. Eventually her wool-socked feet are touching the edge of Mary’s folded up legs, but neither minds enough to move apart. 

Zelda has lived through her share of strange nights in the last several centuries, yet this night, good as it is, may be one of the strangest. She has enough sense to wonder vaguely, drowsily, if someone has bewitched her; if this could possibly be Lilith’s handiwork, or Lucifer’s, or—worst of all—Blackwood’s. That she will blink and in Mary’s place will sit some wicked, ugly creature, mocking her for her folly. For daring to trust, even for just a single lovely, desperate moment. But then she glances over at Mary—Mary, who laughs freely when a movie is funny, whose expression is completely without guile, who wants to take care of Zelda because it might make her feel _whole_ again—she realizes that, truly, it is no spell or enchantment; it’s just _Mary_. It is Mary who is this impossibly and unfailingly kind. Perhaps she can help Mary to find some answers, can give her back some iota of the boundless generosity this mortal woman has shown her in the space of a single evening. She deserves to know where those months went. Perhaps she’ll start telling her what she knows of that time, little by little, in the morning. Perhaps they can take care of each other. 

It is this thought—the thought of burdens lifted, and burdens shared—that lulls her into a sleepy tranquility, that causes her to turn so that she leans up against Mary’s shoulder, that eventually soothes her into a comfortable half-doze. 

“Zelda?” Mary’s voice, soft and tender, rouses her, though she’s not sure how much time has passed. “I think it’s time for you to go to bed.”

Zelda whines her displeasure but untangles herself from the blankets all the same. She stands, shivering, and works the kinks from her neck and shoulders. “I’ll make up the guest room for you,” she says.  


Mary’s eyes widen. “Oh, no,” she says hurriedly, “no, Zelda, I couldn’t possibly—”

“Nonsense,” Zelda says, as crisply as she can with her stuffy nose. “I’m not sending Sabrina’s favorite teacher out in this storm to fall in a ditch and drown or worse, Mary. No,” she says decisively, the matter settled, “you’ll stay here.”

She takes Mary’s soft, warm hand in her own and together they walk upstairs, to whatever happens next.

~~~

When Zelda next wakes, it is because she hears someone sobbing.

Her groggy brain takes a moment to flip through a filofax of options— _a dream? Hilda? Sabrina? Ambrose?_ —before she remembers Mary in the guest room. She throws back the covers and races down the long upstairs hallway, gooseflesh prickling on her bare arms. She opens the door just enough to peer into the bedroom. It is indeed Mary who is sobbing; she’s curled into a tiny ball in the center of the bed, her toes barely sticking out from underneath the flannel nightgown she’d borrowed from Hilda’s closet. The sheets are a tangled mess and the comforter has been thrown to the ground, as though she’s been thrashing from nightmares. 

Zelda has always hated the triteness of the expression “broken heart,” but it is the only thing that comes to mind when she looks upon Mary—that the woman’s heart is in danger of breaking cleanly in two.

Zelda hesitates for only a moment. “Mary,” she says, reassuring yet firm, gently shaking Mary’s shoulder. “Mary, wake up. You’re just having a bad dream.”

It takes several minutes, but Mary’s sobs slow, then turn to faint whimpers that make Zelda feel as though she too is being split in half; Mary’s body relaxes, save for a hand that holds tightly onto Zelda’s own. Her brow is coated in a delicate sheen of sweat. Her sleep-fogged eyes find Zelda’s, and there is something so haunted in them that Zelda has to cast her own gaze downward. 

Mary’s violent shaking eventually calms, held fast as she is by Zelda’s sure and certain arms. She goes limp, weak and spent, like some vicious fever that raged through her has passed. She leans her head against Zelda’s breastbone and lets her heavy eyes fall closed, though Zelda can tell she’s still awake. She doesn’t think sleep will be coming for either of them soon.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Zelda asks, caught off guard by her own question.

Mary sniffles and shakes her head, but answers all the same, like it’s poison she needs sucked from a wound. “There was a monster,” she whispers dully, “made of... of cloth and... and my own rib and I swear I could feel,” here, her voice catches and fresh tears spring to her eyes, “I could feel the pain of... of ripping it out of my chest... the flesh tearing, the bone splintering, and the blood... so much blood _everywhere_ , and—”

“Shhh, shhh,” Zelda says, as Mary’s crying resumes in earnest. “You’re going to make yourself sick, Mary.”

“I’m sorry,” Mary says, voice thick. “You must think I sound completely out of my mind.”

“Never,” Zelda says with such decisive firmness that she can feel Mary twitch in her arms. “Do you have them every night?”

“The nightmares?” Mary asks, and Zelda nods. “Yes. They vary, but... yes. Every night since I started... remembering things again.”

“I’m sorry,” Zelda whispers, holding Mary tighter.

“They don’t feel like nightmares, that’s the strange thing,” Mary murmurs. “I’ve had nightmares before and these... they don’t remind me of that. They feel almost more like... memories, somehow.” She shakes her head, and her hair tickles Zelda’s jaw. “Isn’t it queer? What would I even be remembering?”

“Yes,” says Zelda, her chest hollow and her ears ringing, “it is very queer indeed.”

~~~

Days pass. The worst of the rain passes, too, leaving the familiar drizzle in its wake. The sky is an endless cloud, vast and steely grey. The leaves turn from gold to red to brown, then fall to form great, slimy piles on the damp ground— _so Eden sank to grief_ , Zelda thinks, rolling her eyes at the maudlin line. Zelda has passed many an autumn like this one; more autumns, indeed, than she cares to count. There is no reason for this sensation of something inside of her shifting, something inside of her slowly becoming new as the forest does every October. And yet, it is there.

The first time she and Mary see each other after that strange, stormy night is easy enough to dismiss. Mary had come, bearing a veritable vat of chicken stew, inquiring in achingly earnest tones after Zelda’s cold. And as Zelda smiled and accepted the offering, she brushed it off as simple politeness, merely a favor being returned. _I’m quite fine_ , Mary, she reassured. _I’m always fine_. 

Their second meeting—and their third, their fourth, their fifth, their sixth—are a bit harder to explain away, though it’s certainly not for lack of trying on Zelda’s part. It’s sacrifice, atonement, completed on Hecate’s behalf; she owes her new queen this, owes Mary this, after the torments Lilith wrought in her bitterness. It is for Sabrina’s sake, these visits with Mary; she must ensure that her niece’s beloved history teacher is safe and sane, and stays that way. It is to protect the still-vulnerable coven, because even though Mary has gaps in her memory now, who’s to say that won’t change? It is for the sake of decorum, only the smallest of considerations after all the warm meals and warmer smiles Mary brought her when she was unwell. 

But there are other excuses for the visits, private ones: a litany of them so intimate that Zelda herself is anxious to examine its items. Mary is genuinely _funny_ ; funnier than Zelda had any reason to expect, and funnier even than most other people she knows. She has a subtle, sardonic sense of humor; she slips blink-and-you’ll-miss-them asides into conversations that make Zelda laugh out loud in a way she hasn’t done in decades. 

She can cook, too, just as well as Hilda, if not even better. And with Hilda absent so much more often than not lately, who could possibly blame Zelda for taking advantage of this particular skill set of Mary’s? Mary is untiringly nurturing and warm—though her hands are always cold—in a way that again reminds her of Hilda, but on the sweet mortal she doesn’t find it nearly so irritating. 

Mary is also not entirely unpleasant to look at, Zelda isn’t at all ashamed to admit, and after the way her own body had responded to Lilith when she was wearing Mary’s body, it was difficult not to experience some transference. Here was the form of this creature she had revered—then worshipped, then desired, and finally been so disappointed by—worn by a mortal so tender that she had forgiven this same face all its trespasses at its first shy smile. She had also been plagued by thoughts of kissing that face for quite a few nights after, but that’s beside the point. 

But what frightens Zelda most of all—what follows her through the dim, chilly corridors of the house, murmuring cruel things into the shell of her ear—has nothing at all to do with Mary. No, what frightens Zelda most is the simple fact that she is lonely. She is the loneliest she has been in decades; lonely in such a way that it feels like a lead weight, sitting heavy inside her gut. She can feel reckless impulses rising in her as tides do, born of an aching desperation to feel something, anything beyond the echo of her own tragedies.

Mary’s touch is a balm, her face the sweetest apparition that visits Zelda in her most tender, secret dreams. Mary is ringing laughter and messy curls that smell of lavender and the clean, crisp bite of tea tree oil. She is cozy wool sweaters with cuffs that slip down over her gardener’s hands. Mary is 1940s jazz standards sung in the shower, ever so slightly out of key but still somehow the prettiest thing Zelda has ever heard. She is the pop and scratch of vinyl records and pages in an old favorite book being turned. She is a rich, smokey merlot and buttery popcorn paired with an Astaire and Rogers musical. She is the taste of ice cream, a fire’s warmth on a rainy day, the way sheets smell when it’s barely sunrise and you’ve only just woken up. 

She is the exact opposite of Zelda’s loneliness, and Zelda Phiona Spellman—for perhaps the first time in her entire life—is terrified.


	2. "so I stayed in the darkness with you"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I took the stars from my eyes, and then I made a map  
>  And I knew that somehow I could find my way back  
> Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too  
> So I stayed in the darkness with you_  
> \--Florence + the Machine, "Cosmic Love"
> 
> In which Hilda is the only sensible member of the Spellman family, Zelda seeks comfort after a nightmare, confessions are made, & the promised ~~~sexy times~~~ occur in spades.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most important things first: TW for mentions of and references to sexual coercion/violence/assault! It happens during Zelda's dream, which is that big section of italicized text, if you want or need to skip it. The content of the dream is not vital to the plot; just the fact that Zelda has a nightmare because Blackwood is an abusive bag of dicks.
> 
>  **talkwordytome** : This fic itself is now rated Mature, and this chapter specifically is rated Explicit because sex is described in pretty intimate detail. I know everyone has their own definition and understanding of what "explicit" means, and I personally have zero issues reading or writing sex (obviously), but I DO remember being 13 years old and reading fic that wasn't tagged thoroughly enough and coming across content that I was NOT ready for. I also know that even adults have varying comfort levels regarding sex, and I'd rather be overly cautious and hurt nobody rather than not cautious enough and cause someone discomfort or pain.
> 
>  **cjscullyjanewaygay (csiwholocked33)** : While my girlfriend is the real mastermind behind this fic, I'd like to think my additions and tweaks make it into an even lovelier, sappier, gayer story in much same the way we make each others' lives even lovelier, sappier, and gayer. Long story short, she's like 75% of the effort here, and we're quarantined in our apartment with our cat son being just as insufferably sappy and gay as this chapter suggests. Enjoy, gal pals!

“You’ve been spending quite a lot of time with the Wardwell woman lately, Zelds.”

She and Hilda are cleaning up after dinner on a rare night when the whole Spellman brood had supped together under the same roof. She can hear Sabrina on the phone in the next room, nattering on about some such teenage drama with Rosalind. Ambrose is squirreled away in Zelda’s office with his research, as is his wont lately. Hilda’s hands are damp and soapy, and Zelda does not miss the way she determinedly does not meet Zelda’s eyes when she speaks. “Zelds?”

“Yes, and?” Zelda says haughtily, still drying plates with curt efficiency. “What else might you suggest I do? Pace the halls, wailing like Medea, while you and Sabrina and Ambrose go out and live your lives?” She inhales sharply, suddenly fighting back tears. “Am I not meant to have friends? Am I supposed to spend every waking moment of my extremely long life keeping the house and tending the academy, endlessly working or waiting on the rest of you to come home from your engagements?”

“Bloody hell, Zelda,” Hilda exclaims, wide-eyed. “Goddess knows I want you to have _friends_ ; I’ve been begging you to make some for centuries. It’s just, well,” she sighs and submerges a bowl in the dishwater, “she’s a bit of an odd choice though, Ms. Wardwell. All things considered.” She pauses, equal parts cautious and determined. “But, then,” she scrubs the bowl much harder than necessary, still refusing to look at Zelda, “of course you know that. I mean, you’d _have_ to know that. So, I’m just not going to say anything else. No reason to, really. Lips are zipped, metaphorically speaking.”

Zelda raises her left eyebrow as high as it will go and waits for the inevitable continuation to Hilda’s little speech. Short of _actually_ zipping Hilda’s lips (which Zelda has been known to do on occasion) there is not much one can do to stop her talking once she’s gotten started.

Hilda huffs, dropping the bowl into the water and splashing both of them. “She _shot_ you, Zelds,” she says, nearly pleading. “She shot you in cold blood and—and left you here to _die_ and you would’ve, if not for some _extraordinarily_ lucky circumstances, so,” she takes a deep breath and makes eye contact for the first time since their conversation began, “forgive me, Zelda, if I’m a bit wary of the woman who tried to murder my big sister.”

“I—it’s… complicated,” Zelda says, the excuse sounding weak and rehearsed even to her ears, and she blushes. 

Hilda raises her eyebrows. “Do please enlighten me then,” she says flatly.

The words, when they come, are not the words Zelda intended. “It’s our fault,” she whispers, her throat narrow as a pinhole.

Hilda’s expression immediately shifts from suspicious to pitying, which is even worse. “Oh, Zelda, it’s not—”

“It is!” Zelda hisses, electricity crackling in the air between them. “It was because of us—because of who and what we are—that all of it happened to her; it was because of Sabrina, her destiny, and our _foolhardy_ belief that letting Lilith possess her for months on end and then flit away as if nothing had happened was for some sort of greater good.” 

She feverishly paces the length of the kitchen wringing her hands, aware that she must look hysterical but unable to stop herself. “You don’t _know_ ,” she says, her voice breaking. “You’re not there as she’s coming down from a nightmare; Hilda, the things she describes, what she’s lost, what was _done_ to her, it—it was abominable. You cannot possibly begin to imagine. Neither of us can.”

Her breath is coming in short, sharp pants. She glares fiercely at Hilda, who stares back, her expression unreadable. “So what is it,” Hilda says carefully, “that you plan to do?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Zelda says, and the bulb in the fixture over the dining table pops, exploding into shards of glass from the force of her frustration. 

She sits down at the table, feeling suddenly fragile, like the floor isn’t quite stable beneath her feet. She places her face in her hands, and though she longs for the release of crying, the tears do not come.

Hilda seats herself next to her, and when she wraps her hands around her sisters’, Zelda doesn’t pull away. “You’ll tell her,” Hilda says, and though the words are spoken gently, it is not a question nor a suggestion, but a command. “You’ll have to.”

When Zelda looks up, Hilda can see every inch of her nearly three centuries reflected in the mossy color of her eyes. “Yes,” Zelda says hoarsely. “I suppose I will.”

~~~

That night, for the first time in weeks, Zelda dreams of Faustus.

It is an old dream, the same every time she has it. The content is not particularly violent or shocking; really, it shouldn’t even be especially frightening, should not have the power to make her cry out in the night. 

_She is watching herself as if through a looking glass, watching as the music box spins on and she is caught in Blackwood’s abusive thrall. She watches herself put on that horrible dress and too much makeup, watches herself sashay into his kitchen, watches as she fetches his wine, draws his bath, and finally as he places her hands between his legs and commands her to action. She has no way of stopping it, just as she hadn’t then. She is a marionette, and he grins as he jerks at her strings._

When she wakes, she is soaked in sweat and her heart thrums desperately against her ribs. She rolls over in bed, reaching out to search for Hilda’s hand, before her half-asleep brain remembers that Hilda now sleeps down the hall. She could, she knows, crawl into Hilda’s bed and beg for comfort; could hide her face in Hilda’s neck and listen to her sing lullabies, just as she did when they were girls. Hilda would not—would never—deny her kindness when she is in pain; she would not demand answers, would not excavate Zelda’s consciousness for explanations. But something inside Zelda revolts at the notion of such naked vulnerability.

Instead, she puts on her dressing gown and slips quietly down to the kitchen. She knows she could use a calming draught, or even some foxglove, but the memory of the nightmare is too fresh and bitter for any substance that alters her state of consciousness. She settles for chamomile tea, and as it boils she finds that the familiar nighttime sounds of the old house are soothing enough—the radiators’ low humming, the rain whispering against the window panes, the beams creaking in the wind. 

She finds her thoughts wandering, as they often do lately, to Mary. She wonders what Mary does when she is alone and wakes, gasping, from a mean dream; does she drink tea, or listen to music, or read? Which warm memories does she turn over and over in her mind until they are smooth as river stones? Whose hand did she once reach for to pull herself back to reality? Whose hand does she long to reach for now?

The kettle whistles, startling Zelda out of her reverie. She takes it off the hob with unsteady hands. She doesn’t usually tell anyone the contents of her dreams, not even when Hilda gently shakes her awake because she’s been screaming so loudly she heard it down the hallway. She claims that she doesn’t remember, or that she’s too tired for conversation, or distracts her well-meaning sister with requests for tea she won’t drink and treats she won’t eat. She thinks, sometimes, that she is Pandora’s box; that if she opens herself to the world, untold horrors will come spilling out. It feels safer, if not better, to keep those things locked away in some secret chamber of her heart.

And yet she cannot stop herself from thinking about how nice it would be to be held as she had held Mary that rainy October night; she cannot stop herself from fantasizing about how much like a tonic any small words of reassurance from Mary would be. She longs to unburden herself, to let her sharpest memories slip away like sand through a merciful sieve. To allow someone to look at her and know what she has been through, and to and tell her: _rest. This pain is no longer yours to bear alone_.

What Zelda Spellman does, finally, is make a choice. She picks up their old black landline, and she dials.

When Mary answers, she sounds scared. “What is it, Zelda? Are you alright? Is Sabrina?”

“Oh… I’m fine. She’s fine, we’re all just fine.” She begins twirling the cord around her finger like a mortal from some old sitcom, but then she catches herself. 

“...oh. Did you need something then, love?”

Zelda blushes at the unusually warm term of endearment; on the other end of the line, Mary curses her sleepy brain for its indiscretion. 

“No, I suppose not. I just had… quite the nightmare, and when I woke up I thought of you.”

Mary exhales with relief. “Well, I find that when I’ve had a nightmare, the best way to make it go away is to tell someone everything you remember, like flushing the dead leaves from a gutter so it can flow free again. And if that still doesn’t work, try a bit of chocolate.”

Zelda’s lips twitch into a smile in spite of herself. She feels lighter already. 

“Would you like to tell me about it now, Zelda?” Mary prompts gently on the other end of the line.

Zelda presses two thin, pale fingers to her lips as tears drip down her cheeks. “Yes,” she says, “I would.”

~~~

Zelda finds herself calling Mary after nightmares more and more. Sometimes she tells her about the dreams, but often they simply talk--about nothing and everything. Mary tells Zelda stories from her school day, about what she cooked for dinner, tales of all the silly scrapes her beloved cat, Mr. Paws, has gotten into. And Zelda sits, holding her cup of tea, happy to simply let Mary’s words wash over her like a warm bath.

Bolstered and protected by the velvet curtain of night, Zelda finds herself telling Mary things, too; things she never imagined telling anyone, let alone a mortal. She tells Mary of her father, his casual cruelty and callous words, his anger, his violence. She tells her of the doubts she has faced, and still faces, as she raises Sabrina, how she is never certain that she’s doing the right thing. She tells Mary that she has always longed to be a mother but has never quite known how. She tells Mary how lonely she has been, how isolated, how difficult this past year has been for her. How even Hilda is preparing to marry and move on, and she is still here, same as she has always been.

Slowly, haltingly, she tells Mary the truth of who she is. She tells her of witchcraft, of magic, of all those things that have gotten women before her stoned and burned and hung high from trees. She waits for Mary’s revulsion, for her mocking disbelief, for her angry accusations of blasphemy and abomination. They will come; Zelda is certain of it. But still, she talks, because she has found that now that she’s started she’s not able to stop. She thinks that she has been waiting for this for her entire life.

But Mary doesn’t react with anger. She does not threaten; she does not demand explanations. She offers grace, patience, understanding. When Zelda is too overcome by fear and pain to continue, Mary does not coerce her into saying more. She asks for nothing, and readily accepts all that Zelda is willing to give.

Miles away, in a little cottage at the edge of the woods, the mortal Mary Wardwell sits on the phone with the witch Zelda Spellman, and she listens.

~~~

On no particular December evening, Zelda and Mary sit on the couch in Mary’s warm living room, their skin bathed in corals and oranges as the sun sets outside the window. It is late enough that normally Mary would’ve turned on some lamps and perhaps even lit a fire in the hearth, but they’ve been pressed close on the sofa cushions for so long that she had hardly noticed when the sky began to change.

As Mary Wardwell watches the pink light pass over Zelda Spellman’s face, she thinks of the night they first met. It hadn’t really even been the first time they met one another, though it felt that way in Mary’s mind, addled by confusion over her missing months. She hadn’t known why she was there. She hadn’t known what she wanted. She hadn’t known much of anything—it was before Zelda held her after her nightmare, before Zelda confessed to the horrors of her own, before Zelda revealed who she was, before Zelda laughed a dry chuckle and captured a piece of her heart that she thought had died with Adam. 

Mary now knows that much of who she had been was a reaction to the world’s pressure and cruelty, that it had been a self borne out of convenience rather than authenticity; Mary, the true Mary, is a gentle and curious and startlingly brave creature that Zelda had brought to the surface. She knows that she likes Zelda quite a bit, perhaps more than she has ever liked a woman before. She knows that when she’s with her, she feels safe, and real, and… well, desired. 

Suddenly, she realizes that she has been watching the light play over Zelda’s fair cheekbones for at least a minute, and with a start their eyes lock. 

“Mary?” Zelda says softly, her hand brushing over the other woman’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”

Mary nods hurriedly, but can’t rip her eyes from Zelda’s face. The red wine they have been sipping seems to have gone to her head all in an instant, and her gaze flicks down to the pale witch’s lips. She can see a thin film of tannins staining the petal-smooth skin there—the softest skin, she thinks, that she has ever seen. 

Zelda doesn’t move a muscle, as if she is afraid she might startle this skittish woodland creature of a mortal with even the slightest notion. 

Mary inhales slowly to calm her pounding heart, but her exhalation is stuttered and rushed. 

“Mary?” Zelda whispers, inches from her face now. 

“Yes?” Mary breathes, a prayer. 

“May I kiss you?”

Mary cannot speak, but before she can stop her body, before she can question what she is about to do, she nods. 

So Zelda does. 

Mary’s eyes fall shut, but she can still see the pink light of the sunset and suddenly it is all over everything. Zelda tastes like Zinfandel and honey, like coming home to a place she’s never been but still knows more intimately than her own. Zelda smells like bergamot and jasmine. Zelda feels like when Mary plucks a leaf of lamb’s ear from her garden and rubs it between her fingers, like the sweet syrupy dreams she pretends she can’t remember, she feels—she feels incredible. 

Mary wonders, for a second, why anyone would ever do anything in this world _besides_ kiss Zelda Spellman. She hopes she’ll never have to. 

Zelda’s hand is gentle on her cool cheek, softening her edges. When Mary reaches a tentative hand up to brush through Zelda’s hair, the other woman makes a small mewling noise and she finds she cannot stop touching it; she would do whatever it takes to hear Zelda make those sounds, to smell and feel her silky strawberry blonde waves and anything else Zelda will allow her to feel. 

When finally they pull apart, Mary remembers herself and blinks in shock, then reaches for her glass of wine. Downing it, she sets it back on the coffee table, and only then is she able to meet Zelda’s eyes again. 

“Did you… was that… is it always that...that good?” She inquired, and she didn’t know if she was asking about kissing a woman, kissing a witch, or kissing Zelda specifically. Perhaps all of the above. 

Zelda giggles, the lightest of sounds, and Mary feels her cheeks flush but it isn’t from fear; it’s another sensation that sprouts from deep in her pelvis and vines up along her limbs until she realizes that Zelda has answered her. 

“Not always.” Zelda smirks. The witch’s cheeks are flushed too, and Mary shivers with excitement.

“So you’re not using some sort of—witchly sex charm on me?” Mary asks with a smile. 

Zelda laughs, and Mary decides then and there that she wants to spend the rest of her life making Zelda laugh like that. “No, pet. Though I could whip something up if you like?” she teases. 

Mary laughs too, and before she can speak again Zelda takes the opportunity to tangle her fingers in Mary’s bun. She pulls at the ribbon holding it up, slowly unwinding the curls until they are loose and wild around her face. “Your hair looks exquisite when you have it down, you know,” she says.

“I could wear it down more often?” Mary says shyly. “If you’d like.”

Zelda shakes her head. “No, darling,” she says, “I like that I’m the only one who gets to see you like this.” She picks up where they left off, ghosting kisses over Mary's temples, her nose, her cheeks. “Do you know,” Zelda says, voice husky, “what else I find absolutely exquisite?”

“No,” Mary gasps. “Tell me.”

“I love your eyes,” Zelda says, kissing each translucent lid in turn. “They’re full of curiosity and compassion. And I love your precious, beautiful seashell ears.” She slowly runs her tongue along the whorl of Mary’s right one, then bites playfully at the lobe. “But we can’t leave you out, now can we?” she says to the left one. “Don’t worry, I love you too.”

Mary trembles, and her lips open and close but no sound escapes. 

“I love your neck,” Zelda says, moving further down the length of Mary’s body. “I love its warmth and how delicious it smells, like perfume and powder and _heat_.” She bites down here, too, and a mark immediately blooms in the shape of Zelda’s teeth, and she laughs. “I must also selfishly admit that I love how fair you are, because that means the entire world will get to see the proof of just how well I’ve ravished you the night before.”

“ _Ravished_?!”

“Shhh,” Zelda says, “don’t make fun of me. Now, where was I? Ah, I think I remember,” she tenderly cups Mary’s breasts through the fabric of her blouse. “These, I think, are one of things that I love most of all.” She starts to unbutton Mary’s shirt, but Mary’s hand on her wrist stops her.

“Zelda,” Mary whispers, “can I, er, confess something?”

“Of course, my dear.” Zelda’s eyes immediately go soft, and she takes both of Mary’s hands in hers to stop their nervous fidgeting. 

“I haven’t—well, with Adam, I never—we didn’t get a chance—we never...consummated our relationship. Is that okay?” The last part is barely audible. 

“Oh Mary,” Zelda begins, and her voice is the gentlest Mary’s ever heard it. “It’s more than okay. Lucky for you, I’ve had a few centuries of practice, and I’ve been told I’m quite a fine teacher.” 

Mary exhales a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding as Zelda presses her lips to the mortal’s neck again, gentle but insistent. “As I’m sure you’ve observed, I don’t mind a bit taking the lead when it comes to…” she scatters open-mouthed kisses down over Mary’s clavicle. “Things of this nature,” she finishes, her breath hot on Mary’s chest. “Now, may I?”

Mary nods hurriedly, but Zelda is lost in nuzzling the warm skin where her shirt collar is parted. 

“Am I going too fast? It’s alright to say so, if I am,” Zelda says suddenly, sitting up. 

“Oh no, no no, I was just… please, carry on,” Mary stutters. “I feel I’ve been… waiting for this, for you… for years.” There are tears in her eyes, but her face is bright and self-assured. “Please; I want this.” She bites her lip. 

“Well then,” Zelda says, tossing her hair over her shoulder with a crooked smile, “if you’re sure.”

Zelda opens the next few buttons with her teeth, a skill Mary hadn’t imagined possible. She leaves a long kiss on each newly exposed inch of skin, until finally her tongue touches Mary’s navel. 

The mortal woman has never experienced this kind of attention, and she feels the hairs stand up all over her body. She eagerly lets Zelda push the shirt off of her shoulders, glad she wore her white lace bra today rather than one of her plain white cotton ones. 

Zelda seems glad of it as well, bending her mouth to hungrily lave her tongue along the skin just under the edge of her right bra cup, then her left. “Lovely,” she says, meeting Mary’s clear blue eyes for a long moment. When she slips one of the satiny white straps down over her shoulder, Mary remembers with a start that she is meant to be participating in this too. 

“You’re… you’re wearing an awful lot of clothes,” she says, feeling silly the moment the words leave her mouth. 

“It’s true,” Zelda concedes. “How about we remedy that?” With a flick of her wrist, Zelda is bare but for a set of pale blue silk undergarments, complete with matching stockings and garters. 

Mary hesitantly brushes her fingers across the fine brocade of a periwinkle bra cup. “I never realized…” she muses, eyes blurring to a darker blue, “how much I like…” she pauses again, lip caught in her teeth. “It’s just, I quite admire your, er…” she caresses the body parts in question, entranced, but cannot seem to bring herself to speak the word. 

“Breasts?” Zelda says with a chuckle. “Yes, they are rather wonderful. Yours especially. Here, let me show you a little trick.”

When the redheaded witch slips one long finger between white lace and Mary’s skin, she shudders and snaps her eyes shut. At first the gentle touch to her nipple seems almost too much, but when one of Zelda’s nails scrapes faintly at her areola she sees lightning behind her eyelids. The sound she makes is so foreign that at first she doesn’t even realize it’s she who made it.

Zelda smiles and unclasps Mary’s bra.

~~~

By the time it’s dark outside the windows of the cottage, the second bottle of wine is gone, along with Mary’s pants and both women’s brassieres.

Flushed and eager, they trip hand in hand down the hall to Mary’s bedroom. Zelda backs Mary up to the edge of the bed, gripping the smaller woman’s waist in her hands as she pushes her back onto the mattress. Mary giggles as she bounces onto the bedspread, happier than she’s been in years.

“I can’t begin to fathom why that silly man hadn’t already ‘deflowered you,’ as the mortals used to say.” Her fingers traced feathery arcs up Mary’s legs, lingering at the tops of her thighs to enjoy the way it makes her squirm and shudder. 

“Mm _hmm_ ,” Mary says intelligently.

Zelda strokes up her legs until they are parted, then lies down between them. “Good thing I found you,” she mumbles against the lace that covers Mary’s pelvic bone.

“Mmmhmmmm!” Mary replies.

But when Zelda begins to draw the fabric down, Mary touches her hand. 

“You don’t have to do that if you don’t want to, Zelds.”

“Why wouldn’t I, dearest? Unless you’d prefer I didn’t?”

“No, it’s not that at all; I just wouldn’t want you to do anything that you wouldn’t enjoy.”

“Mary,” Zelda says solemnly, “there is nothing I would enjoy more than feeling and tasting you on my tongue as I bring you to blissful completion.”

Mary’s eyes go wide. She nods, opens her mouth, says nothing, and finally opens her legs slightly further. 

Zelda licks her lips at the silent invitation, pulling Mary’s panties all the way down and off over her feet. She blows a little charm-warmed air over her fingers so they won’t be too cold, but before she can conjure any lubricant she catches the scent of Mary’s own wetness. “Goodness. Someone is certainly quite keen.”

Mary only whimpers. 

When Zelda spreads her labia apart and blows ever so slightly on her clitoris, Mary makes a deliciously unholy sound. When she slides a finger into Mary’s warmth and touches her tongue to her tender bundle of nerves, Mary makes the sound again, but louder. 

_One could get used to these sounds_ , Zelda thinks, slowly curling her finger and swirling the tip of her tongue. 

Mary feels her body winding towards something, and for a moment she freezes in confusion. She’d felt this way only a few times before, most of them when she was just waking from the dreams she refused to acknowledge; she didn’t know what to make of the sensations sweeping through her.

Sensing her tension, Zelda brings her other hand up to squeeze Mary’s. When she relaxes, the waves of heat pulse faster beneath her skin, spreading all over her like butter. After a few minutes of mounting ecstasy, the feeling rushes back to a point between her legs, builds, and all at once crests like a bud bursting into bloom. She moans low and strident, a sound she didn’t know she was capable of producing, as Zelda steadily pumps and tongues through her climax. 

When Mary comes back to herself, there is a warmth all over and a tingle between her hips that makes her feel like she is made of sighs and cream. 

Zelda pulls a handkerchief out of thin air, wipes her chin, and then very purposefully licks off her finger. As she crawls up Mary’s body, her full breasts brush against her skin, nipples pebbling at the contact. “How was that?” she purrs.

“Marvelous,” Mary murmurs.

Draped over Mary like a shawl, Zelda is all golden liquid and pulsing with need.

“You know what would be even more marvelous?” Mary asks, her hand in Zelda’s hair. Zelda hums, inquisitive. “Returning the favor.”

Zelda’s eyes darken, and Mary smiles as she runs a cool hand down the witch’s back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **talkwordytome** : the other night I entered into what can only be described as a fugue state and wrote a TON, and I think it's going to wind up being the bulk of chapter 3. csiwholocked33/cjscullyjanewaygay still needs to make her own contributions/edits, but the turnaround should still be very quick. I will warn you now that it is VERY angst heavy, so gird your loins, my friends.
> 
>  **cjscullyjanewaygay (csiwholocked33)** : while I do not sanction her angst, I understand that it is integral to the plot. I will be assuring that it is followed by plenty more fluff and sexytimes in upcoming chapters {some of which are already in progress!}, because I am ~~not a fuckenin masochist and life is sad enough already right now~~ a simple girl with simple needs.


	3. "no more dreaming like a girl so in love"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Seems that I have been held in some dreaming state  
>  A tourist in the waking world, never quite awake  
> No kiss, no gentle word could wake me from this slumber  
> Until I realize that it was you who held me under…  
> No more dreaming like a girl so in love,  
> So in love with the wrong world_  
> \--Florence + the Machine, "Blinding"
> 
> In which difficult truths are confessed, Zelda Spellman has her heart broken for the first time in nearly 300 years of being alive (& handles it about as well as you'd expect), and Hilda Spellman is there, as ever, to help pick up the pieces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for a very brief reference to self-harm.
> 
> All aboard the angst train! Choo choo! Next stop: SADNESS! We would say that we're sorry but we also think it's rather beautifully written so *shrug emoji*
> 
>  **talkwordytome** : I wrote the majority of this chapter because I sort of enjoy writing angst/drama & csiwholocked/cjscullyjanewaygay doesn't, and I really did go back and forth a lot on whether or not I think I was depicting Zelda's reaction in a way that makes sense, or if I was writing it as too extra. I finally landed on "it makes sense", mostly because if you've been alive for 300 years and never been head over heels in love before? It's going to HURT when that love is taken away from you. Like, break-ups are bad enough when you're a regular person with run of the mill trauma, and Zelda Spellman is Very Much Not That.

With each day that passes, it gets a little harder for Zelda to tell Mary the truth: that her nightmares are not nightmares at all, but her body remembering what her mind can’t. 

There are moments, of course, when she could tell her. Revealing that the Spellmans were in fact witches went shockingly well; surely this would be traumatic, but not so personally consequential. But every time she starts to gather the courage, all it takes is one look at Mary’s face for her to lose her resolve: she does not have it in her to break this woman any more than she has already been broken. She is doing Mary a kindness, Zelda rationalizes. Eventually the dreams will have to stop; eventually the atrocities committed against her will fade away like ink on paper that’s been left out in the sun, and she will be free of all that darkness forever. 

This logic does not help when Mary wakes, screaming, from a nightmare, when all she can do is beg Zelda to hold her. It doesn’t help when she finds the emerald necklace Adam had given her years before and she can’t stop sobbing. It doesn’t help when someone asks her about the months when she was Greendale’s principal and Mary freezes like a fawn in the path of an 18-wheeler. It doesn’t help when they’re at the market shopping for dinner and Mary has a flashback so vivid that it leaves her shaking, huddled on the floor of the produce department.

Zelda knows that the longer she puts it off, the worse the conversation will be. It will seem as if she’s been hiding it, as if she had a reason to be hiding it, as if she had some hand in all that was done to Mary. She finds herself caught in a vicious cycle; she is too afraid to tell because she knows it will hurt Mary, but afraid of being hurt in exchange for every day she _doesn’t_ tell.

Hilda, for what it’s worth, does not press her sister. She hasn’t even mentioned it since their talk that night over the kitchen sink. She’s friendly as ever when Zelda has Mary over for supper; she does not for a second let on that she’s harboring ugly, confidential information, even though Zelda knows it must be driving her mad. She makes pleasant, easy conversation—one of Hilda’s greatest gifts, and one Zelda couldn’t learn if she tried—and always insists that Mary eat extra dessert. Mary doesn’t seem to notice that anything is amiss, or if she does she chooses to ignore it. But still Zelda can sense Hilda watching, waiting, sending quiet prayers out into the universe that Zelda will do the right thing, because _she has to_. 

Zelda has started climbing into Hilda’s fluffy pillow nest of a bed on the nights when she and Mary sleep apart, seeking comfort, or perhaps absolution. “I can’t do it, Hildy,” she says through tears. “I can’t hurt her like that; I _won’t_.”

And while Hilda always holds her tighter when this happens, she never says what Zelda desperately wants to hear: _you don’t have to tell her, everything will be fixed; the love you have for each other is more than enough_. Hilda doesn’t say a thing about it, but still Zelda hears her words in every silence, a prophesy: _you’ll have to_.

~~~

It’s three weeks to the day after the winter solstice and bitterly cold. The clouds hang heavy under grey skies, threatening snow. Zelda sits at the kitchen window, smoking one cigarette after another. She snaps irritably at anyone who speaks to her; she is visibly restless, uneasy. Mary has invited her over to the cottage for dinner—she’d excitedly informed Zelda over the phone that she was going to attempt the bœuf bourguignon recipe from her old copy of _Mastering the Art of French Cooking_ —and Zelda finds herself dreading the hour she knows she must leave.

She has decided that she will tell Mary tonight; she must. She’s put it off long enough, and there will truly never be a right time for this conversation. When they are sleepy and tipsy and warm after wine and a good meal—when Mary is laid in her lap, Zelda’s hands combing though her dark hair, a perfect symbol of the warmth and trust they have spent months building—will have to suffice. 

She wears one of her favorite dresses, dark plum silk with a fluted skirt, and diamond earrings set among amethysts. She spritzes on a bit of the custom scent a Parisian parfumier designed for her in the fifth arrondissement nearly 90 years ago now, not so long before Ambrose first came to live with them. She colors her mouth with her favorite lipstick, ruby red and rich as blood. She makes herself look as lovely as possible, as if beauty can act as a protective armor, though she knows better than most people that it cannot.

“You’re looking awfully pretty, Zelds,” Hilda says cautiously as Zelda prepares to leave. “Going someplace special?”

“To Mary’s for the evening,” Zelda confirms. “I’ll be back late, if at all, so don’t feel that you need to wait up.”

Zelda’s hands shake as she tries to pack her bag, and she knows that Hilda is staring at her. She tries to light another cigarette but can’t get her lighter to work. “Zelda?” Hilda says. “Are you alright there, love?”

Zelda starts to nod but changes her mind midway through and shakes her head instead. “I’m going to talk to Mary tonight,” she says. “About Lilith and her… possession.”

Hilda’s expression goes so sympathetic that Zelda almost cannot stand it. “Zelds,” Hilda says, “I—are you… are you sure that you’re ready? That is, do you know what you’re going to say and how you’re going to say it?”

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, sister,” Zelda says grimly.

“Zelda,” Hilda calls. 

Zelda pauses in the doorframe and turns back to her. “Yes, Hilda?”

Hilda quirks her head to the side, nervous and uncertain. “Zelds,” she says, “just… please, _please_ be careful.”

When Zelda arrives at Mary’s, it is raining hard enough that she has to run to the front door, head bowed to protect her face from the droplets. Mary greets her on the front porch. “Goodness,” she says, “it’s raining cats and dogs, isn’t it?”

“Mmm,” Zelda says, murmuring her agreement, “it’s positively heaven-sent.” Mr. Paws winds nervously through Zelda’s legs, as if he somehow suspects trouble is imminent.

Zelda is quiet and distracted all through dinner and she can tell her mood worries Mary, but she’s not able to calm her mind enough to mask it. “Is it alright?” Mary asks.

Zelda blinks. “Is what alright?” she asks.

Hurt flashes across Mary’s face. “The bœuf bourguignon, silly,” she says. “Is it alright? It was my first time making it and I thought it went well, but you’ve been so quiet, and you’ve hardly touched what’s on your plate—”

“Darling,” Zelda interrupts gently. “Dinner is lovely. The bourguignon is marvelous. My reticence has nothing at all to do with your cooking, I assure you.”

“Then what is it, love?” Mary asks, brow furrowed. 

Zelda sets her fork onto her plate with a quiet _clink_. “Mary,” she says. “I have something that I need to tell you.”

~~~

She tells Mary what she knows, which isn’t everything, but it’s enough to fill in the gaps. She drags the words from her mouth against her own will; there are moments when what she is saying is so repulsive that she can feel bile surge into the back of her mouth. She forces herself to meet Mary’s gaze as she speaks—she owes her that much—no matter how much it pains her to see such awful, bitter grief written on the face she loves more than any other face in this world.

When she finishes, she and Mary are both breathing heavily like they’ve just completed a feat of great physical exertion. Mary is otherwise silent, the corded muscles on her neck standing out, as tears flow freely down her cheeks. “Mary?” Zelda whispers. “Mary, are you—”

“You knew,” Mary says, a dark flush creeping onto her sharp cheekbones. “You knew the… this whole entire time.” She looks angry, but the expression is foreign on Mary that for a moment Zelda swears she is sitting across from Lilith instead. 

“Yes,” Zelda says, stricken, “I did.”

“You knew,” Mary repeats dully, “and you didn’t tell me. You pretended that my flashbacks were… were nothing, that I was… _insane_ ; you… you _held_ me after my nightmares, you saw how much they cost me, and you let me—let me _hurt_ and you… you… _you_ ,” her voice breaks, too overwrought to continue.

“Mary,” Zelda begs, “please, tell me what I can do. There must be something I can do.”

“Leave,” Mary commands, gripping her kitchen table with both hands like it is the only thing anchoring her to the present.

Zelda feels the bottom drop out of her stomach. “What?” she asks. “Mary—leave? What do you mean?”

“I mean leave,” Mary says. “Now.”

A column of tears rises, hot and insistent, in Zelda’s throat. “Mary—” she tries, but Mary cuts her off.

“I can’t even look at you, Zelda,” Mary rasps. 

“Mary,” Zelda says, grabbing Mary’s hands frantically, “surely we can find a way to… to fix this. There has to be a way to fix this. Please,” Zelda says, breath trembling, “ _please_ Mary, let me fix this.”

Mary pulls her hands away from Zelda’s grip and walks slowly to the other side of the room. “You can’t,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m not even sure I know who you are anymore.”

With those words still echoing in the air, Mary exits the kitchen. Zelda hears the familiar _snick_ of Mary’s bedroom door closing, and then the click of her lock. It’s a clear dismissal, but Zelda is rooted to her seat. She feels certain that if she were to stand up the kitchen, the cottage, and perhaps the entire world would tip upside-down, that she would fall through endless empty space, down and down and down, like Alice through her rabbit hole. Some central cog inside of her has been knocked loose. She cannot make anything stay solid or still, neither inside nor out.

Zelda eventually forces herself out of the chair, but her legs won’t hold her weight. On her knees, she crawls to the kitchen door; shaking violently, she tries once again to stand. This time her legs support her, but she still cannot find her equilibrium. She makes her way to the front door by leaning halfway against the wall, her shoulder aching from carrying so much of her weight. Her hand is on the doorknob when she tries one final time: “Mary? Mary, I—can I call you tomorrow? _Please_?”

But the only answer is silence.

When Zelda finally opens the door to leave Mary’s cottage, the wind has picked up and the rain has turned to sleet. It stings her face as it falls, but Zelda finds she doesn’t care. She finds that she suddenly cares about very little. She feels empty, hollowed-out, as though every important part of her has been removed and discarded. She fumbles for her keys, but her hands are too unsteady to unlock the driver’s side door. She turns and walks towards home instead; Hilda or Sabrina can deal with the car tomorrow. It does not matter. 

She finds Sabrina waiting for her on the front porch, shocks of white-blonde hair blowing around her face. Hilda must have filled her in, must’ve told her that she didn’t anticipate Zelda’s confession going well. Mere hours ago this would have made Zelda furious, but now it barely even registers. 

It was barely a year ago that their roles were opposite, but to Zelda it feels as though it has been eons; where has that girl gone, with her face yet to lose its baby roundness and all her convictions about right and wrong? Who is this confident young woman standing in her place, her eyes full of weary, pained understanding? _I once stood where you stand now_ , those eyes say, _and I once grieved as you are about to_. 

Zelda makes it up the first step, then the second, but on the third her knees buckle and her legs give way again. She collapses, hard, onto the old wood; she places her face in her hands and closes her eyes so tightly that starbursts of light explode behind them. Her breath hitches in a sob, and she feels Sabrina’s arms go around her, holding her like she is afraid Zelda is about to shatter.

“It’s over,” Zelda whispers, the same words Sabrina used, once, on that storm-swept November evening after Harvey broke it off. Sabrina holds her even tighter.

Zelda cries with heaving, messy abandon; she cries until her nose is running, until her eyes are swollen, until her tears have created a damp patch on Sabrina’s sweater. She cries until her lungs burn and her throat is stripped raw. Sabrina rocks her and whispers calming spells, and Zelda suddenly sees with bright, painful, beautiful clarity the mother that Sabrina might someday be, if she so chooses. 

She cries until she cannot anymore, until her body is too fatigued even for tears. “We should go inside,” Sabrina murmurs, the first words she has spoken to Zelda directly since Zelda returned home.

Zelda removes herself from Sabrina’s arms and shakes her head. “You may go,” she says, voice raspy, “but I have a few things I must attend to, first.”

A shadow of alarm passes over Sabrina’s face. “Aunt Zee,” she says uncertainly, “I’m not really sure that you should—”

“I will be fine, Sabrina,” Zelda says, standing cautiously, testing the strength of her legs. “I won’t be gone long. Tell your Aunt Hilda that she need not stay awake waiting for me. I will be back tonight, but late. I shall see the two of you in the morning.”

She walks away, towards the Greendale woods, ice and wind whipping fiercely at her back.

~~~

“I’m worried about Aunt Zee, Auntie Hilda,” Sabrina says, staring out the window towards the tree line, waiting for a familiar red-headed figure to emerge. “She was so _sad_ , sad like I’ve never, ever seen her before, and then she just… left. What if she gets hurt?” The true question, unspoken, hangs heavy between them like overripe fruit: _what if she hurts herself_?

“I know, hen,” Hilda says, handing Sabrina a mug of tea. “But your Aunt Zelda will come back when she’s ready.”

“Aren’t _you_ worried?” Sabrina asks, faintly accusing. The dishes on the table vibrate slightly, a side effect of her anxiety.

“No,” Hilda lies, taking a sip of her own tea. “Zelda has always been a person who needs… time to herself when she’s upset or confused. Ever since we were such little girls. After our father would,” here, she falters, unsure how much she wants to reveal of their father’s cruelty to her niece, who—despite everything—is still so young. Sabrina looks at her expectantly. “After Zelda and our father… argued,” Hilda continues delicately, “she would vanish for hours, sometimes days. She never told me where she went, and I never asked, but she always came back eventually.”

Sabrina turns her eyes back to the forest and resumes her lookout, as though she is a lighthouse, as though the simple fact of her love is a beacon that might guide Zelda home. “But what if this time,” she whispers, “she doesn’t?”

Hilda wraps Sabrina in a one-armed hug. “Then darling,” she says with all the false certainty she can muster, “we will simply have to go out there and find her.”

~~~

When Hilda wakes at 3:30 a.m. it is to a panic attack, though it takes her only a moment to realize it isn’t her own. She squints and makes out the faint, familiar shadow of Zelda standing uncertainly in her doorway. She turns on her bedside lamp, washing them both in buttery yellow light.

“Zelda?” she murmurs, getting out of bed. “What time is it? Did you only just now get home?”

“I—I’m sorry,” Zelda stutters, tripping backwards. “I shouldn’t have come, I—I shouldn’t—I didn’t mean—”

“Shhh, shhhh,” Hilda soothes, pulling her sister into her embrace. “I won’t hear a word about it. Oh, my precious one, you’re soaking wet.” And she is completely soaked through, shivering so violently that her teeth are beginning to chatter.

Hilda takes a step back to get a better look and realizes that Zelda’s clothes are covered in mud and leaves; her hands and nails are bloody and raw. Her stockings are torn and so is her dress; the heel of her left shoe has broken off. There are rows of angry, parallel scratches going the length of her arms, and something inside of Hilda’s chest clenches painfully when it occurs to her that they could not possibly be accidental.

“Let’s go get you cleaned up, hmm?” Hilda says, voice thick and wobbly with tears. “Go take off those wet things before you catch your death of a cold, and I’ll run you a lovely hot bath, alright, darling?”

Zelda does not argue; she simply turns and walks down the hall towards her bedroom. Hilda watches her go, itching to follow; it is almost unendurable, her desire to help, to nurture, to take care even to the point of smothering. For once, she doubts it would bother Zelda, isn’t sure her sister would even truly notice, and that thought hurts Hilda all the more.

She fills the tub with water, as hot as it can go without being unbearable. She adds two cups of rich, creamy goat’s milk, some dried lavender, and a dash of honey. “Zelda?” she says softly, peeking into Zelda’s bedroom. “The bath is ready when you are, love.”

Zelda is immobile on the edge of her bed, staring blankly into the distance. She’s still wearing her wet clothes. She does not move when Hilda calls her; she doesn’t even appear to have heard her. “Zelds?” Hilda says softly, approaching Zelda as she might a wounded doe. “Sweetheart? Can you come with me into the bathroom?”

Zelda still does not move, though she does finally look up at Hilda; her eyes are wild, and her breathing is shallow and quick. “Come here,” Hilda says, helping Zelda to stand. “There we go, that’s a good girl.”

Zelda leans heavily on Hilda, as though the short walk from bed to bathtub requires all of what little strength she has left. Hilda raises Zelda’s arms and carefully removes her dress. She undoes the hooks of her brassiere and rolls her torn stockings down to her ankles. She is as careful as she was when she did this for Sabrina, over a decade ago now, when Sabrina was still too young to undress herself. Zelda is passive and obedient, accepting the coddling without a single word of complaint. Once her shivering sister is down to her knickers, Hilda sets one of their best towels on the warmer and makes to leave. “Need anything else, sweetheart?”

When she turns back though, Zelda is crumpled on the bath mat. Her eyes stare straight ahead, unseeing. 

Hilda sighs. “Oh, Zelds.”

Once she’s helped her into the tub, Hilda squeezes streams of warm water down Zelda’s arms and gently scrubs away the dirt. She rubs a salve made of rosehip and beeswax and vitamin e oil onto Zelda’s hands and cuts. She washes Zelda’s long hair, taking care to work through all the tangles, to tenderly massage the shampoo into Zelda’s scalp. She sings the old lullabies that their mother once sang; she tells stories from their childhood, like her words might be enough to transport the two of them back years and decades and centuries, back to when they were small but did not know it, back to when they were an entire universe unto themselves.

When the water begins to go cold, Hilda helps Zelda step out of the tub. She wraps Zelda in that fluffiest towel. She dresses her in a nightgown; not one of Zelda’s but one of her own, high-necked and of soft flannel. She sits Zelda down on the edge of her bed and slips wool socks over her feet. She casts a warming charm on the covers, turns them down, and guides Zelda to lie beneath them. She kisses her forehead. Through all of this, Zelda has been silent and impassive, but when Hilda turns to leave Zelda grabs her wrist.

“Stay,” Zelda pleads, her voice quiet but desperate. “Please stay, Hildy.”

Hilda cannot keep back the warm tears that streak her face. She crawls under the bedclothes; Zelda wraps her arm over Hilda’s middle, clinging tightly, her face pressed to her breastbone. “I’ve got you,” Hilda whispers. “I’m not going anywhere.”

~~~

In the wake of the break up—if this agony can be named with such a juvenile, frivolous term—Zelda Spellman does not leave her bed for the first three days, save trips to the adjoining restroom. Hilda brings her endless trays of tea and food, coaxes her to take small sips and bites; she tastes nothing, but follows Hilda’s directions without fussing. She sleeps for most of the hours she is bed bound, and often when she is awake she weeps bitterly into her pillow. When the latter occurs, Hilda comes and rocks her until the tears slow and she drifts off again. Hilda makes her cool compresses dipped in oils of eucalyptus and peppermint for her sore, swollen eyes; she brings her a basin of warm water and a sponge each evening so she can wash her face of the day’s tear tracks.

When she finally emerges from her bedroom, the sunlight streaming through the windows makes her squint and her legs are as unsteady as a newborn deer’s. Hilda and Sabrina welcome her into the kitchen with bright, false cheerfulness; they have her sit at the table and serve her blueberry pancakes for breakfast. She does not eat more than three bites before she pushes the plate away, insisting that she isn’t hungry. She finds herself desperate to disappear back into the soothing dark of her room; even this limited amount of socializing leaves her frazzled and exhausted. She feels like an exposed nerve: the world is too loud, too busy, too bright.

In the months after, Hilda’s wedding plans are put on the back burner and Sabrina returns to being a day student at the Academy. Ambrose has been spending time abroad in Europe but he travels back to Greendale, and gives vague answers when asked how long he plans to stay; they know, for all intents and purposes, that he is home indefinitely. Zelda is aware that all of this is being done for her benefit, and in some other universe their attentions embarrass her, but in this universe—where she is so completely and irrevocably broken—she simply does not have the strength to care.

She eats only enough to survive, and alternates between periods of consuming a bottle of whisky a day or strict sobriety in the name of self-punishment. She loses so much weight so rapidly that Hilda begins to make threatening noises about involving a doctor, though Zelda’s glare quickly puts a stop to that. She passes off the bulk of her academic duties to Ambrose and her unholy ecclesiastical responsibilities to Hilda and Sabrina. She has gained enough respect within the coven that no one thinks to question her sudden absence. She is, after all, their fearless leader; surely she is busy attending to vital, hell-sent tasks. When she is alone she wanders aimlessly through the house, mired in grief, lost within memories. When others are home, she keeps away from them. There is only one person she wishes to talk to, and it is the only person that she cannot.

She has gone from being a person who seldom cried to a person who might burst into tears at any moment, for any reason; everything, anything, reminds her of Mary, might press against the gaping, bloody wound her absence has created. She cries when Hilda unintentionally buys Mary’s favorite breakfast cereal, when she and Hilda try to watch an old movie and one of the trailers on the tape is for _An Affair to Remember_ , when Sabrina turns on the radio and it is tuned to the oldies jazz station, when Ambrose asks if she wants ice cream for dessert. She cries until even she is sick of hearing herself cry, but she is still unable to make it stop.

Winter passes, bleak and barren and cold. Zelda never stops shivering, no matter how many sweaters Hilda knits her or how many blankets Hilda wraps her in. She becomes delicate and frail; she takes ill nearly every other week, though whether it is rooted in the physical or in the psychosomatic no one seems to know. The days bleed together; one is indistinguishable from the next and the next and the next. She moves like she is sleepwalking. She struggles to talk even to Hilda, finds that conversation threads slip away from her like gossamer silk. Her mind is meandering and unfocused, too foggy for the pursuits she once enjoyed: reading, research, writing. She lets Hilda care for her, lets her run their mother’s antique silver brush through her hair, lets her fix endless cups of chamomile tea, lets her read aloud from her silly romance novels. Her ministrations provide minimal comfort, but they make Hilda happy and keep her from fretting, and that—for now—is all she has. 

Spring comes on sudden as a fever, the world exploding in pastel flowers and firm green buds and birdsong. Hilda tends her garden on days that are warm enough, and manages to occasionally coax Zelda into joining her. The first day she ventures uncertainly outside, Zelda feels like a Victorian convalescent; she wears a sunhat to protect her skin—so fair that it is practically translucent after her winter spent indoors—and she is too weak even still to do much besides sit in a chair and watch as Hilda weeds and putters.

She eats a bit more every day and slowly regains her shapely figure; color steadily returns to her cheeks with each hour she spends in the garden with Hilda. One afternoon, as Sabrina tells them a funny story from her school day, Zelda laughs, and the sound is so foreign that in her surprise she claps a hand to her mouth. Zelda returns to teaching, though Hilda insists on half-days as she recovers her strength. She still cries, but less often, and usually in the middle of the night. Sometimes when she wishes for the release of tears, they won’t come. 

Slowly, so slowly that she does not realize that it is happening, Zelda Spellman begins to heal.


	4. "but as the water fills my mouth, it couldn't wash the echoes out"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There's a drumming noise inside my head  
>  That starts when you're around  
> I swear that you could hear it  
> It makes such an almighty sound  
> Louder than sirens{silence}, louder than bells  
> Sweeter than heaven and hotter than hell  
> _  
> —Florence + the Machine, “Drumming Song”
> 
> in which a chance meeting at the Greendale Farmers' Market makes Zelda Spellman realize she has something she needs to say & catharsis ensues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **talkwordytome** : This is a slightly shorter chapter when compared to the first three but it does have a lot of action in it, so hopefully that makes up for the length! This chapter is much less angsty than chapter 3, if angst is something that stresses you out, and the next chapter is largely angst free, we pinky promise!  
>  **cjscullyjanewaygay (csiwholocked33)** : we put it in the tags also, but just in case anyone missed it: TRIGGER WARNING FOR SELF-HARM IN THIS CHAPTER. It's only a few brief mentions and is by no means graphic, but I know it's always important to warn our fellow mentally ill gal pals just in case <3  
> P.S. There really is a LOT of emotional falling to floors in this fic, isn't there?

The first time Zelda sees Mary after that terrible January evening is at the very start of summer. She is at the Greendale Farmers' Market—Hilda and Sabrina had dragged her out, with their usual insistences that it was a beautiful day and Zelda needed “time in the sunshine” or some such nonsense— looking through a booth that sells used early editions. Last weekend Hilda had mentioned coming across a copy of _The House of Mirth_ that was in particularly excellent shape, and Zelda is hoping she’s not too late to purchase it. She is thumbing through their selection when she hears the achingly familiar voice: “Zelda? Is… is that you?”

Zelda whirls around. Behind her stands Mary Wardwell, and she looks so precisely just as Zelda remembers her that she has to rub her breastbone to be sure she continues breathing. “Mary,” she manages. “I—you… you’re here.”

Mary’s curls are pulled back beneath a silk paisley scarf that makes her look typically not of this era, which is, somewhat infuriatingly, one of the things Zelda loves—no, _had_ loved—most about her. She is barefaced, save for her signature shade of lipstick, but flushes redder than any blush when their eyes meet. “I come here most Saturdays,” Mary says, then falters. “Zelda, I... I mean, how—how are you?”

“Fine,” Zelda says, recovering her haughtily indifferent demeanor somewhat despite the knot that still sits in her chest. “I’m fine. I’m here with Hilda and Sabrina,” she adds, a bit unnecessarily. “And yourself? How are you, Mary?” In her uncertainty her voice becomes cold, and she can see the hurt blossoming on Mary’s face.

“I’m well enough… Mr. Paws misses you,” Mary says, smiling a bit sadly. “He sleeps where you used to most nights.”

Each word is a sucker punch to Zelda’s abdomen. She searches desperately in the crowd for her two familiar blonde heads, for anything or anyone that might give her a reasonable escape from this conversation. “Give Master Paws my warmest regards,” Zelda says, as calmly as she’s able. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find my sister.” 

She turns sharply to leave, but Mary catches her elbow. “Zelda,” she says, and Zelda realizes that Mary is trying in vain not to cry. “ _I_ miss you too.”

Zelda jerks her arm out of Mary’s grip, grief and longing and anger all erratically spiking and vying in her psyche. “Don’t touch me,” she whispers. “You—you don’t get to touch me.”

Mary’s expression twists and she steps back as though she’s been burned. “Zelds— _Zelda_ , I—”

Zelda shakes her head frantically. “No,” she says with each shake, “no, no, no. You… you do _not_ get to come up to me like _nothing_ has changed and tell me that you… that you _miss_ me.” Her voice is loud enough that she is beginning to draw looks from strangers, but she does not—and perhaps cannot—lower it. “You haven’t spoken to me in… in months, and you have no idea— _none_ , Mary—what that has been like, what that has _done_ to me—”

Here, her words break over an involuntary and unwelcome sob. Hilda must have come to find her at some point during her conversation because, before she knows what’s happening, Hilda is wrapping protective arms around her shoulders. “Mary,” she says flatly, measured in a way that Hilda’s voice never is, and it takes Zelda a moment to understand that it is because her sister is angry. “Zelda and I really must be going.”

“I’m sorry,” Zelda hears Mary say, “I truly didn’t mean—”

“Well, I’m sure you didn’t mean quite a lot of things, pet,” Hilda says, dangerously cheery, “and yet here we are.”

When they return home, Zelda steals away to her room and closes, locks, and wards the door. She turns out the lights and draws the shades. She tosses her shoes into a corner, crawls under the bedcovers still fully clothed, and curls herself the smallest that her body will allow. She waits for the shaking to pass, for the pain to leave the center of her chest, for the nausea to stop roiling through her stomach. She knows she can’t hurt herself—she had promised Hilda months ago that she wouldn’t anymore after Sabrina had caught her mid-self-harming and was so upset she didn’t talk to them for days—so instead she balls her hands in fists so tight that her nails leave purple half-moon grooves in the tender flesh of her palms.

When she is finally ready to go back downstairs, the sun is setting and dinner has already been prepared, eaten, and cleaned up. Hilda has left her a plate wrapped in tinfoil on the kitchen table: herbed ricotta tomato tarts with fresh cucumber salad, a favorite of hers. She takes a bite, then another when she realizes just how hungry she is. She is halfway done with her second tart when Hilda comes into the kitchen. “Oh good!” Hilda says. “You found your dinner. Aren’t the tomatoes _divine_? I got them at the market today and simply had to make something with them.”

“It’s delicious, Hildy,” Zelda says. “Thank you.” She clears her throat. “I’d also like to… to thank you, for your intercession at the market earlier today. I… it was… thank you.”

“I hope I didn’t lose my temper too badly at her,” Hilda frets. “I fear I was _quite_ stern. But she put you through so much, Zelds, and you’ve seemed so much more yourself again the last few weeks—”

“Hildy,” Zelda says, gently cutting off her sister’s rambling. “You were fine, and Mary’s far tougher than she looks. Please don’t even think twice about it.”

Hilda busies herself tidying up the kitchen as Zelda finishes her meal. “You know, Zelds,” adds Hilda cautiously, “it would be okay if you did want to talk to her. To Mary, I mean.”

“I’m aware that it was Mary to whom you were referring, sister,” Zelda says dryly.

“What I mean, Zelda,” Hilda says, giving her a look, “is that it would make sense if you felt there was… unfinished business that you need to address with her. That’s all.”

Zelda shakes her head. “No, Hilda,” she says. “I think I’ve said all that needs saying.”

Hilda looks unconvinced—because after centuries of practice, she finds even her sister’s best attempts at hiding her feelings quite adorably unconvincing—but is persuaded into silence by the force with which Zelda’s fork and knife hit the plate after she broached the subject.

~~~

It’s just after 11:30 p.m. when someone begins pounding on Mary’s front door.

Mary wakes with a start and throws a robe over her pajamas. “What in heaven’s name,” she whispers, and then louder, “Who is that? Who’s out there? What do you want?”

The banging momentarily ceases. Mary feels a familiar crackle of electricity pass through the air, and as she steps backward she holds her breath. Before she can call out again, her front door explodes off its hinges and slams into her back wall, sending several picture frames crashing to the ground. In the threshold where her door once hung stands—who else?—Zelda Spellman. Strands of red hair stretch out like tiny tentacles around her head, buoyed by the static, and her green eyes are blazing furiously. The wind howls like it’s about to storm, though the evening sky is clear. _My Zelda always did know how to make an entrance_ … Mary thinks, equal parts surprised and alarmed but also a little amused in spite of herself.

“Mary,” Zelda says, her voice deadly calm. “I have something that I would like to say.”

“Oh,” Mary says faintly, “well. Do please come in.”

With three long strides Zelda is in her living room. Mr. Paws meows uneasily, his fur standing on end: he is either sensing the impending conflict or has absorbed all of the remaining static electricity in the air, and Mary scratches him reassuringly behind the ears. “Can I get you anything, Zelda?” Mary asks. “Some tea, perhaps? Maybe a nightcap?”

Zelda closes her eyes and laughs without humor. “A nightcap,” she repeats. “No, Mary, I would not like a nightcap.” Her eyes flick open again, flashing dangerously. “You truly don’t know what you did to me, do you?” she asks, her jaw set.

The witch’s transparent anger rankles Mary’s normally even temper, and she tenses. “What _I_ did to _you_?” she says disbelievingly. “You knew,” she continues lowly. “You knew that whole time what… what was done to me, and you kept it from me— _lied_ to me—and then expected me to, what, be _fine_? When you eventually decided to… to share?”

“Of course I didn’t expect you to be _fine_ ,” Zelda snaps. “Do _not_ insult either of our intelligences, Mary, it doesn’t become you. I am not nearly so naive as to think that one could receive the information I shared with you and be _fine_.”

“So then what did you expect?” Mary asks. “How else could I, or anyone, have handled it? Please enlighten me, Zelda, because I really don’t know.”

“There is a middle ground,” Zelda says, and her voice not loud like the other day at the market but somehow far scarier in its deliberate tones and spine-sharp diction. The contents of Mary’s junk drawer rattle ominously. “There is a middle ground between reasonable anger and _abandonment_ , Mary!” Her chest heaves. “You do not _cut_ someone from your life like you’re amputating an infected limb; you do not tell them simply to _leave_ one night and then cease speaking to them for months!” 

She paces frantically, fingers opening and closing into fists at her sides. The lights in Mary’s cottage pulse feverishly with each flex of Zelda’s hands. “You don’t know, you don’t _know_ ,” she says, then pauses, breathing deeply. “You nearly—what you did, Mary, it nearly… _destroyed_ me, and...” and her voice shatters, her legs fold, and she crumples onto Mary’s floor.

She sobs, and she is half-expecting Mary to come to her. Mary desperately wants to, wants to wrap her arms around Zelda and cry forgivenesses and apologies until they both fall asleep, but knows she needs to say her something first.

It is silent for so long that Zelda begins to wonder if Mary has left the room, but she still can’t quite get her tears to stop.

“You hurt me too, you know, Zelda,” Mary finally says softly, so softly that Zelda almost does not hear her. Anyone else wouldn’t have, but even when she doesn’t want to, Zelda can always hear her.

“That is what people do, Mary,” she murmurs. “But you didn’t even give me the opportunity to apologize.”

Zelda stands, brushing dust and cat hair from her skirts. “In mÿ nearly 300 years,” Zelda continues, and though her voice is not as steady as she wishes it could be she does not break eye contact, “I’ve been intimate with many, many partners, of varying sorts and genders—”

“Is this how you begin all your apologies?” Mary asks flatly, but Zelda’s glare stops her short.

“Witches are carnal creatures, rarely romantic,” Zelda continues. “We seek out lust often, but rarely love. I was no exception.” She inhales a shaking breath. “Until just a few months ago. I’ve been in love precisely once, Mary: with you. I am truly sorry that it made me act in such a way that I caused you pain, and there is nothing I want more than to take that pain back. But, of course, we both know it doesn’t work that way, don’t we?”

Mary’s door, forgotten on the floor, suddenly flies over and reattaches itself to its hinges with a flick of Zelda’s wrist. Another flick and the picture frames are back on her wall. Zelda brushes her hair back from her eyes and gives Mary—who stands, stricken and wet-eyed, in the center of her living room—one last long look. Mr. Paws reappears and rubs against Zelda’s skirts as if finally recognizing her, and she gives him a cursory stroke down the back. “Take good care of her, Miste— _Master_ Paws.”

Mary watches helplessly as Zelda leaves, and it is as if she takes all the heat and light in the room with her. Her crystal blue eyes well over and she collapses to the rug, wholly unable to cope. Mr. Paws—who Zelda had always insisted upon calling Master Paws because it was _more dignified_ —headbutts her with a nervous trill. “How can we fix this?” Mary whispers to him, a sob caught in her throat, not realizing she’s echoing perfectly Zelda’s parting words from months before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **talkwordytome** : I personally imagine that Zelda has a tendency towards Irish goodbyes when she has a falling out with another person, which is why she's so acutely sensitive to how badly it hurts when Mary does that to _her_. Zelda leaves; she isn't left.
> 
>  **cjscullyjanewaygay (csiwholocked33)** : We promise the next chapter is happier and sweeter, and that _there will be time*_ for all the apologies and forgiveness they deserve {plus some fun sexytimes because now that Zelda has unlocked Mary's sexuality, she can't seem to turn it off}. Also, we wanted to clarify that while Zelda here exhibits some self-harming behavior and in the show she separately shows an interest in BDSM/Power Play kinkiness, we in NO WAY meant to imply that the two things are related or equivalent. The two of us didn't want to write into the sexy part of that angle any more explicitly since we aren't personally familiar with that whole ~scene~, but we respect Zelda and her choices, kinky and otherwise.


	5. "oh, you like to think that you're immune to the stuff"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The lights are on  
>  But you’re not home  
> Your will  
> Is not your own  
> Your heart sweats  
> Your teeth grind  
> Another kiss  
> And you’ll be mine_  
> \--Florence + the Machine, “Addicted to Love”
> 
> in which Mary Wardwell's incredible show of bravery leads to a reconciliation (amongst other things).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This particular chapter is rated Explicit for detailed descriptions of sex!
> 
>  **cjscullyjanewaygay** : I have taken it upon myself to apologize that it took us a couple days to bridge the gap between the angst of the last chapter and the balm of this one, as I was the one who was too into Animal Crossing and _Station Eleven_ and streaming like three different docuseries to be writing for hours every day, as my dear dedicated girlfriend does when left to her own devices. She is My Person, as they say, and I adore her for this and all other things <3
> 
> **talkwordytome** : For the record, I shan't ever apologize for the presence of angst, addressed with a balm or otherwise >:) (though I will 99.9% of the time address it with a balm) (mostly because there are enough sad endings in the world without adding my own)

It is early evening on the longest day of the year, and uncommonly hot for Greendale in June; Zelda is wearing one of her more casual ensembles—a semi-sheer, celery-colored linen sheath dress with a deep V in the back that showed off her shoulder blades, under which she had even forgone stockings—but her skin is still sticky with sweat. The air throbs with cricketsong and honeysuckle. Her hair is heavy against her neck and she piles it into a messy bun; she lounges on the chaise in the parlor nursing a delicious creation of Hilda’s, something with apricots and lemon juice and entirely too much bourbon. She is flushed and ever so slightly faint, and the inside of her head buzzes in a not wholly unpleasant manner. She wonders idly why she hadn’t given in to Sabrina’s pleading that they install air conditioning on the lower floors of the house. 

She has said entire house to herself today: Sabrina is at the Greendale public pool with Rosalind and Theo and is slated to sleep over at Roz’s afterwards, Hilda is staying the evening with her Dr. Cee, and Ambrose is wherever it is Ambrose goes when he disappears for hours and days. There is something so marvelously _sensual_ about this sort of cloying heat, she thinks. It makes her want to do terribly, scandalously irresponsible things; it makes her feel as ripe, as daring, as she did when she was all of 16 and she first signed the Book. Perhaps that’s why she hadn’t let the others talk her into air conditioning. What was a little heat to a witch or a warlock, creatures born of and sustained by lust and fire?

She shifts on the chaise, her pelvic region pulsing uncomfortably. It feels as if the slightest brush against her bare arm would be enough to send her moaning; it has been months, she realizes, since she was touched by anything other than her own hands.

She is thinking that she might purloin one of Hilda’s saucier romance novels and read it as she indulges in a very, very, _very_ long bath when she hears three knocks on the front door. She rolls her eyes and drags her body into an upright position, a bit unsteady, and stalks towards the foyer. Most likely the unexpected caller is Sabrina; she has an exceedingly annoying tendency to forget her house keys. 

The knocking continues. “Yes, yes, I’m _coming_ ,” Zelda calls irritably. “There’s no need to make such an incessant racket.”

When she opens the front door, she is at first so surprised by the caller that she immediately slams it shut again. She closes her eyes. She is hallucinating; she must be. She is in the throes of terrible heatstroke—plus a far more acute case of hyper-arousal—and she is having visions. She blinks and opens the door again, a bit slower this time, but the apparition has not changed.

Mary Wardwell stands on her front porch, wearing hardly more than a slip; her feet are bare and her dark hair is wild and frizzy. Her pupils are blown and her chest is mottled with red.

“Zelda,” she says, her voice throaty and warm, as though Zelda should’ve surely been expecting her. 

Zelda swallows. “Mary,” she returns uncertainly. The slip is ivory satin, only a few shades lighter than the skin of Mary’s clavicle. Something inside of Zelda pulses again. 

“I’m not quite able to make the sort of entrance you are, I’m afraid,” Mary says, and a bubble of hysterical laughter nearly escapes Zelda’s mouth.

They stare at each other for a long, aching moment. It is Mary who finally speaks first. “But you had your say,” she whispers, “and now, I get to have mine.”

With uncommon forwardness, Mary steps inside, grabs Zelda by the shoulders, and pushes her up against the wall. Her mouth finds Zelda’s quick as anything, hot and searching and needful. Zelda’s tongue slides deftly between Mary’s lips, and Mary bites down—only a little, just enough to tease—and she can hear Zelda’s surprised gasp of delight. 

They have just enough presence of mind to shut the front door, then eventually even to leave the foyer and stumble up the stairs, shedding articles of clothing as they go. They move together, a fluid tangle of eager limbs, to collapse onto Zelda’s bed. It had always been good between them, even wonderful after Mary had gotten the hang of things and let her inhibitions fade, but this was a different kind of coupling: white-hot like a filament, breathless and unstoppable as the rising tide. 

Finally stripped of everything, their bodies press tightly together, hip bones fitted like puzzle pieces. They are flushed and panting, heady with their shared desire.

“Mary?” Zelda whispers.

“Yes?”

“Are you going to make me come?” she asks, merry and wicked.

“Oh, Zelda,” Mary says, “you have no idea.”

And, as it turns out, she really didn’t. During previous sexual encounters it had always been Zelda who took the lead, but Mary is feeling rather impossibly brave this afternoon, and she wants to be the one to call the shots. She rolls them gently so that she is on her hands and knees straddling the panting witch, and just this shift in dynamics causes a rush of heat to Zelda’s core. Mary lightly runs curious fingers down Zelda’s torso, taking care to examine every inch, every freckle, every soft curve, just in case—she can’t even think to the end of that sentence.

As she grazes her nails over a pert nipple, Zelda moans in a low contralto, and Mary offers her a mischievous half-smile. “You like that, do you?” she asks. 

“That,” Zelda purrs, “may be the understatement of the century.”

Mary shifts from fingers to mouth and kisses the pattern she had just finished tracing, lingering again when she arrives at Zelda’s breasts. She flicks her tongue over the left nipple, then carefully bites down, cautious of hurting her; the answering moan is confirmation enough that this is welcome, this is exciting, this is _good_. Teeth and tongue, tongue and teeth; she shifts back and forth between the two with expert precision, until Zelda’s hips are practically bucking off the bed in her ecstasy. 

Mary moves on to the right nipple, and as she is sucking and biting, her hand travels down towards Zelda’s vulva. She flutters cool fingertips over the tops of her legs, and the redhead under her writhes and whimpers.

With one hand Mary trails down to spread her lover apart—Zelda eagerly parts her legs and angles her pelvis up, more than ready—and with the other hand at last she rubs across her clitoris with a confident, practiced motion. Zelda is wet, practically dripping, and the knowledge that it is due entirely to her is enough to make Mary feel nearly as aroused as Zelda. 

Mary smiles, licks her lips, and crawls down between the porcelain thighs she had so missed. Even after months apart, she knows where to suck and where to stroke, where to apply firm pressure and where to lightly tease. When to insert two fingers inside Zelda’s cunt and curl them until Zelda digs her fingernails into Mary’s scalp, high with bliss. But it is Mary’s eyes staring into Zelda’s own, so sweet and earnest in their obvious desire for Zelda to let go, that begin to undo the knot that has been tied so tightly inside of Zelda for so long. Zelda feels herself sliding towards euphoria, feels the inevitable climb to orgasm beginning. Her thighs shake and her pulse skips, and it is finally the unintentional scrape of a fingernail against her labia in conjunction with a firm tongue on her clitoris that sends her with a moan so long it feels pulled from the very depths of her soul.

Mary stretches languidly, then scoots up to lay her head is on Zelda’s chest. “Your heart is racing,” she observes, her hand resting on Zelda’s breastbone as it rises and falls with her breaths. 

“Mmm,” Zelda agrees, eyes shut. “That’s entirely your fault.”

Mary grins. “Glad I could be of service,” she says.

“Cheeky,” Zelda admonishes, then drops a long, lazy kiss on the top of Mary’s head. “So am I.”

~~~

An hour later, they lie side by side in Zelda’s bed, both panting, every molecule in their bodies vibrating. Aftershocks roll through them in waves, and Zelda feels pleasantly like she is floating somewhere above the rest of the world, safe in a bubble with Mary. Her Mary, who smells of post-coital sweat and lavender lotion and tea tree oil, who has returned to her after so much time.

Well, returned for the moment, anyway, though how long she intends to stay Zelda is unsure. “What,” Zelda says groggily, “might you suggest happens next?”

Mary half-smiles. “I have a few ideas,” she says, sitting up and moving so that she is straddling Zelda’s hips once more.

But Zelda pushes her off. She wraps the sheet around her upper torso because the thought of having this conversation while nude is unbearable. “I mean it, Mary,” she says, crossing her arms. “I don’t have the… emotional stamina,” she swallows, “for something… fluid, or temporary. Not with you.” She does not say what she is thinking: _I will not survive losing you again_.

Mary turns over onto her side and props herself up on an elbow. “I know,” she says softly. “It just… it all happened so quickly,” she says, playing with one of Zelda’s auburn curls. “Everything with us, I mean. Before you I’d only ever been with Adam, and not even… sexually, as you know. And then there you were, this gorgeous, glamorous creature,” she smiles faintly, “so mysterious with all of your secrets and… and baggage.”

Zelda snorts. “I believe the words you’re looking for are ‘witchcraft’ and ‘trauma’, Mary,” she says. “Glamorous indeed.”

“But what I’m saying is—you know, but I just need to—I was vulnerable too, Zelds,” Mary says quietly, braiding a small section of Zelda’s hair. “You’re not the only one with trauma.”

“I know,” Zelda says, “and I know I’m not.”

“And when you waited so long to tell me what you… what you _knew_ ,” she says, and Zelda can hear her voice beginning to waver with tears, “even though it could’ve freed me, and there was a part of me that couldn’t help but feel that you’d been… using me until you knew what you needed to know, or until you decided that you’d had enough.”

Zelda’s breath is a violin string pulled taut and ready to snap. “Mary,” she says, “I wouldn’t—I couldn’t—I’d _never_ ,” she grabs Mary’s hands in her own. “I need you to know, no matter what happens today, no matter what we decide, that taking advantage of you was never my intention. Ever. _Please_ know that, Mary.”

She cradles Mary’s jaw in her hands. “I loved you,” Zelda murmurs, then hesitates for only a moment before adding, “I still love you. You are as much an extension of my selfhood as a limb, Mary, and just as necessary. When you left, it ached as if I’d lost a part of myself. I never knew that after all those decades, I could feel that way about someone. A mere _mortal_ , no less,” she smirks slightly to show Mary that she is joking (mostly) about that last part. 

“A compelling point,” Mary says, starting another braid. “Tell me more.”

Zelda thinks for a moment, letting the sheet fall as she wraps an arm over Mary’s waist. “I’ve always been a solitary creature,” she says, “and it never felt like it was out of necessity; it felt like a conscious decision I had made.” She smiles, a bit sadly. “Sometimes it’s difficult to tell the difference between the two. But then I met you, and the way that you looked at me, it was as though… as though for the very first time someone could see me for all that I was. Does that make even a bit of sense?”

Mary buries her face in the crown of Zelda’s hair, wishing that she could eat Zelda’s perfect and particular scent because surely it would be enough to fortify her for the rest of her days. “What you mean,” she says simply, “is that I’m your person.”

“Yes,” Zelda says, “I suppose that I do.

Mary runs her hands over Zelda’s face with all the tenderness of the most sacred of benedictions. “Then it is a timely, lucky life,” she says, kissing Zelda after each word, “because just as I am yours, you, Zelda Phiona Spellman, are mine.”

~~~

The four weeks that follow on the heels of their solstice tryst are some of the loveliest in Zelda’s memory. Every moment she has is spent in Mary’s company. One afternoon they go berry picking; Mary teases her when she eats more than what she puts in her basket. Zelda’s sweet, juice-stained lips leave pressed-flower kisses on Mary’s neck. They have picnics in the forest behind the Spellman home; after they finish their meal, Mary lies with her head in Zelda’s lap and Zelda tells her about the properties of every flower, every leaf, every herb. The old Greendale drive-in theater shows classic films on one of their four screens each night, and Mary and Zelda are often in attendance; they see _The Apartment, Casablanca, Roman Holiday, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg_. They sob through the entire second half of _West Side Story_.

One hideously hot weekend they make an impromptu trip to a nearby beach town. They stay at a bed and breakfast right on the shoreline, a frilly bright place with sea glass decor and striped wallpaper that in a former life Zelda would’ve considered frivolous and overdone. With Mary, it is the most beautiful place she has ever seen. Zelda can hear the sea singing to her as she falls asleep. They lie all day on their brightly colored towels and go for swims when they get too warm. The sun brings out the blonde in Zelda’s hair, the blue in Mary’s eyes. Mary turns a pretty shade of golden brown; Zelda develops a truly fantastic sunburn. They wear floaty dresses and stroll on the boardwalk after sunset. They eat saltwater taffy and ice cream and curly fries for dinner, and Zelda wins Mary a stuffed bear at a shooting gallery. Mary talks Zelda into riding a rollercoaster at the amusement park, and Zelda clings to Mary, her face buried in Mary’s neck the entire time. 

Zelda eats when she is hungry; she sleeps when she is tired. She listens to her body in ways she hasn’t in decades, or centuries, or perhaps even ever. She might as well be a girl again, free as she is of responsibilities, of worries, of pain. She stops waiting for the pendulum to swing in the opposite direction; she stops waiting for the next terrible thing. When she looks out into the horizon, all she can see is Mary, and this is enough to sustain her. It is— _they are_ —enough to see her through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The phrase "a timely, lucky life" is an excerpt from a longer quote ("a timely, lucky life, just beyond the margins of this poem") and comes from one of my favorite poems: "I Would Like to Go Back as I Am, Now, to You as You Were, Then" by Beth Ann Fennelly. You can (& should, given that it's absolutely exquisite) read the whole thing here: http://www2.southeastern.edu/orgs/lalit/fennelly.html


	6. "do I look moderate to you?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Want me to love you in moderation  
>  Do I look moderate to you?  
> Sip it slowly and pay attention  
> I just have to see it through  
> Passion's new  
> Want me to love you in moderation  
> Well, who do you think you're talking to?_  
> \--Florence + the Machine, "Moderation"
> 
> In which Zelda and Hilda Spellman do NOT fuck around when it comes to protecting the people they love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are nearing the end of this fic! We _think_ there should only be one chapter after this one, and of course we'll be sure to give Mary and Zelda the happy ending they very much deserve.

Mary and Zelda are spending a rare afternoon apart—Zelda has taken Sabrina and Rosalind into the city for a long-promised, much-dreaded trip to the mall—and Mary is just beginning to enjoy the bit of solitude she’s been given when someone knocks on her cottage’s door.

She’s not sure who she was expecting it to be, but certainly not Hilda Spellman with a picnic basket, smiling in a manner that is sweet but somehow also unsettling.

“Hello, pet,” Hilda says cheerfully. “Mind if I come in? I brought goodies.”

Mary blinks. “Oh,” she says, “well, yes… yes of course.” Nervous, she opens the door a bit wider and gestures for Hilda to enter. “Make yourself at home,” she finishes, recovering herself somewhat. 

And Hilda, bless her— _or would it be ‘curse her?_ ’ Mary wonders—does just that; she goes straight to Mary’s kitchen table and unpacks her basket. She’s brought scones and jams, homemade French bread and pâté, raspberry tarts and sweet cream. “Where do you keep your plates, petal?” Hilda asks. “And do you have anything to drink? That’s the one thing I forgot, silly me.”

“I can get the plates,” Mary says, trying to sound less uneasy than she feels, “and there’s a pitcher of lavender iced tea in the refrigerator.”

“Ooh, that sounds scrumptious,” Hilda says approvingly. “Get some glasses too, won’t you, love?”

Once beverages are poured and food is plated, Mary and Hilda sit opposite each other at the table. Hilda is still smiling kindly, but she does not eat. Neither does Mary. She has a feeling something tense is about to happen, but she has no idea what it could be. 

Hilda speaks first. “Zelda doesn’t know I’m here,” she says, “and it is important that you not tell her that I visited with you today.” Her tone is perfectly polite, but Mary finds herself shivering despite the humid July air.

Mary nods, chewing her lower lip. “I won’t tell her,” she says. “I promise.”

Hilda smiles thinly. “Wonderful,” she says. She takes a bite of a raspberry tart before continuing. “Now I’m going to talk for a few minutes,” she says, “and you are going to hear me out, without interrupting, until I am done. Do you understand, dear?”

Mary nods again, eyes wide. She thinks, perhaps, that people are getting it wrong when they name Zelda as the scarier Spellman sister.

Hilda takes a deep breath. “I’ve known our Zelds,” she begins, “for every waking moment of my life. I’m closer to her than I am to any other person, living or dead. I know her as well as she knows herself, and at times better. And for nearly 300 years, my sister did not fall in love. It just wasn’t what she wanted—and that was fine—if lonely, I’m sure.” She gives Mary a shrewd look. “It was difficult for her, you know, after our brother Edward and his Diana—that’s Sabrina’s parents, rest their souls—passed. She saw what loving Diana, who happened to be a mortal like yourself, did to him. She saw how difficult it made his life, Sabrina’s life, and our lives, too.”

She takes another bite of her tart, scooping up with it a generous amount of cream. “Witches and warlocks, we—most of us, anywho—aren’t like you all. Romance, marriage, and monogamy all seem rather… well, silly when you’re going to be alive for several centuries. Of course, we Spellmans have always been a tad, er, unconventional.” The smile she gives Mary here is true, and Mary offers her a weak one of her own in return. “After Edward, there was Sabrina with sweet Harvey, then Dr. Cee and me; it’s a tricky business, loving mortals. You all so often misunderstand who we are, what we are, and even if you manage to move beyond that there’s the… the frankly _unimaginable_ agony of knowing we will, almost undoubtedly and rather protractedly, outlive our mortal partner.”

Hilda sighs and contemplatively spreads some pâté on a piece of French bread. “You really should have something to eat, Mary, it’s all delicious,” she admonishes. “Now, where was I… oh! Zelda, love, mortals, et cetera. Right-o.” She daintily licks some remnants off of her fingers and continues. “So, when Zelds first started spending time with you, I was definitely concerned—and particularly so given your unique history with our kind, my sweet—but it was so wonderful getting to see my fierce big sister fall in love. I’ve only ever wanted Zelda to be happy; my entire life, that’s all I’ve ever hoped for her, and with you she is the happiest I’ve seen her.”

Mary allows herself a small smile, and finally takes a sip of her iced tea. 

Then something in Hilda’s eyes changes, and Mary feels herself tense. “But then,” Hilda says quietly, “you broke it off. I know, I know,” she says, holding up a hand when she sees that Mary is about to speak. “I know that the way Zelda went about revealing what she knew of you and Lilith was reckless and poorly thought out. I know too that the way she hid it from you for those months must have been even worse. I didn’t—and still don’t—blame you for being angry. Hecate knows _I’d_ be bloody angry. She should have told you sooner, and I didn’t need to tell her that for her to know it. I myself have felt how badly it hurts, the way that Zelda keeps secrets, the way that she… witholds things. It’s one of her absolute worst qualities, even when her intentions are good, and I am truly so sorry that it caused you such pain.”

“However,” the word falls between them, sharp as any blade, “you, as they say, screwed the pooch quite badly too, my dear.”

“I need you to understand,” Hilda says, leaning across the table, “that I’m not being even a smidge hyperbolic when I say it nearly killed her, the way that you ended things. No closure; not even a phone call. I’ve never, _never_ , seen Zelda that sick and miserable; it was like she’d been… cursed, or… or killed and brought back as a ghost. I was afraid she wouldn’t recover at all, but she did, more or less. I know she doesn’t look it, but she’s fragile, our Zelds is; she’s survived so much more than a person should have to.” Hilda looks at her thoughtfully. “Perhaps that’s why the two of you are so well suited.”

Mary looks up for the first time in a few minutes, but continues wringing her hands. 

“As I was saying, no matter how badly she handled things with you, even if an ending was quite understandably what you needed, she deserved more than the ending you gave her.”

“I know,” Mary says, her voice small and young even to her own ears. “I know that she did.”

“But now you’re back!” Hilda says with a tinkling laugh. “Which is all well and good and rosy, hurrah and huzzah for love, and so on and so forth, but I would be remiss if I didn’t make something known.” She puts her hand on Mary’s arm and squeezes. “If you ever hurt Zelda Phiona Spellman that way again, the only thing that will stand between yourself and an untimely death is Zelda’s affection for you. Have I made myself clear?”

“Crystal,” Mary whispers faintly. Hilda beams, and this time her smile is genuine.

“Oh, lovely,” Hilda says, then takes a long sip of iced tea. “Now that we’ve got _that_ bit of unpleasantness over with, there is something that I’ve been dying to know: does Zelda’s snoring keep you up at night? Because it certainly did _me_ back when we shared a room.”

Mary laughs, loud and throaty and full. “ _Yes_ ,” she says, giggling. “It’s _dreadful_ ; how can a person as pretty and elegant as she is make such a terrible racket?!”

“The secret,” Hilda says, giggling now too, “is to turn her onto her right side. That makes her stop, at least until she rolls back over.”

“But naturally she claims that she _never_ snores,” Mary says, rolling her eyes fondly.

“Of course not,” Hilda says. “Our Zelds would never do something as uncouth as all that.”

When Mary finally takes a bite of a raspberry tart, it is easily among the most delicious things she has ever tasted. _Our Zelds_ , she thinks. She quite likes the sound of that.

~~~

Zelda and Mary are spending another rare evening apart—Zelda had returned late from taking Sabrina and Rosalind shopping in the city—and though she cannot sleep, she is relishing the quiet peace of the house without another waking soul when she is interrupted by an insistent knock on the front door.

Zelda isn’t expecting guests at 11pm, and she certainly isn’t expecting to open the door and find Mary’s uncanny-valley-alter-ego leaning against a column on her front porch. Zelda wonders briefly how she ever mistook Lilith for Mary; although they share a body, they wear it so utterly differently. Lilith’s dramatic makeup, her voluminous barrel curls, her lips turned up in a sneer—she possesses none, _none_ , of Mary’s sweetness, or her openness, or her pure and earnest love. Lilith is alluring, poisonously so, but gives off the unstable energy of a uranium molecule. She is shockingly and garishly sexy. Zelda had been taken in by her before, but the heat she felt now was more than half anger, a searing rage at this person—could one call Lilith, demon from the beginning of humankind, first witch, goddess of hell, a _person_?—who wore the body of her former queen and one-time paramour, but had ravaged the psyche of her present and true love. She had Mary’s eyes, but there was something sinister in her smile. 

At the sight of her, Zelda’s mouth flattens into a thin line. “Get off my property,” she hisses. “ _Immediately_.”

Lilith’s eyes dance mischievously. “Is that any way to speak to your queen?” she asks.

Zelda stiffens. “You are _not_ my queen,” she says. “Not anymore. Now leave, before I am forced to remove you myself.”

“Oh, I’d like to see you try,” Lilith drawls. “Anyway, I’m not here for _you_. I’m here for Sabrina.”

“Why?” Zelda asks sharply, hackles raised. “What do you want with Sabrina?”

“My, my,” Lilith says, smirking, “aren’t we feeling protective today. I don’t think it’s any of your business what I want with Sabrina.”

“ _Everything_ is my business when it comes to Sabrina’s protection,” Zelda snaps. “Tell me why you are here, or you shall be made to leave. It is that simple.”

“Oh, just a bit of logistical Hell-related business,” Lilith says, examining her dagger-sharp nails. “You know how it goes.”

“She isn’t here, anyway,” Zelda says, crossing her arms. “She’s spending the night with a friend. You’re welcome to search the house if you don’t believe me,” she adds, right eyebrow raised.

“Perhaps I could come in? We haven’t shared one of our delicious evenings in over a year now,” Lilith purrs, eyes drawing up and down Zelda’s curves. 

“I think you should go, now, before I call upon my new queen and let her do the honors.”

Lilith rolls her eyes so dramatically that the blue irises briefly vanish. “Well, this was delightfully pointless,” she says, sickly sweet and sarcastic. Zelda might be imagining it, but Lilith also seems almost… disappointed? “Thank you _very_ much for absolutely nothing,” the demon continues, “and I am sure I will be seeing you again soon.”

She’s already halfway down the porch steps when Zelda calls out after her: “You don’t even _care_ , do you?” She hates the way her voice breaks on the word _care_. 

It is this crack in Zelda’s tough exterior that causes Lilith to turn back towards her though, interest piqued in spite of herself. “Care about what?” she asks.

“What happened to Mary Wardwell,” Zelda says, “when you possessed her body, and after. You don’t care that she still hurts, every single day.”

Lilith smiles, but her eyes are flat and dark. “Ah, yes,” she says, “I heard tell that you were… consorting with my dear little mortal doppelganger. Curious, are you, about how the other half lives? Or just desperate to relive our little tryst?”

Zelda’s neck flushes a deep, furious red. “You have no idea what you did to her,” she says, her voice low and dangerous. “You obliterated every stable piece of her life—everything that mattered to her and everyone she loved—and it nearly _destroyed_ her. You left her without any answers, without any support, without any hope for healing.”

“I don’t recall telling anyone that I didn’t care,” Lilith says, her face impassive. “I brought her back, did I not?”

“Oh, please,” Zelda scoffs. “What a pathetic excuse. As if bringing her back could erase the ten months of Hecate knows _what_ all you did while you were occupying her body. She has post-traumatic stress disorder now, did you know that? She suffers panic attacks, depressive episodes, terrible anxiety—she has nightmares nearly every time she sleeps, hideous, horrible imaginings that threaten to destabilize any grip she has on the fabric of reality.”

“You told her what happened,” Lilith says, and it is a statement of fact, not a question. Had she been checking up on the Spellmans, and not just Sabrina? Or had she been checking on _Mary_?

“Yes I did,” Zelda answers, jaw set, “and she didn’t speak to me for months afterward. There is also the small matter of you convincing her to _shoot_ me—which, by the way, I still haven’t found a way to adequately explain to her, and I’m not certain that I ever will.”

Here, Lilith at least has the decency to look chagrined. “I was angry,” she says, “at being denied protection and shelter.”

Zelda barks a laugh. “We were all angry, Lilith,” she says. “I am _still_ angry. Anger doesn’t make you special; it is the one thing you and I have in common.”

With that she turns to go back inside, but Lilith’s voice stops her cold. “Ms. Spellman,” she says, sounding nearly… contrite? “I really do regret many of the choices I made during my time as Mary Wardwell. For what it’s worth. And you should know something…” she trails off, all the fiery overconfidence of minutes before now gone. 

Zelda waits, hand on the doorknob, but keeps her back to Lilith. “There’s a reason,” Lilith continues, “that Mary thought the Spellmans would have answers to her impossible questions, and you specifically. I thought, perhaps, leaving that conviction in her head might… oh, I don’t know. Lead her a bit closer towards some sort of… healing, as you so quaintly put it.”

This admission is enough to get Zelda’s attention. “That was you?” she asks, turning back around but not meeting her eyes.

Lilith nods. “It was one of my final acts,” she says softly, “prior to returning to Hell. I’m aware that it was not much, but we can only offer what we ourselves already possess.”

“You are correct when you say that it wasn’t much; it wasn’t anything resembling enough...” Zelda says icily, then relents slightly. “Thank you for it.”

Lilith inclines her head. “I would not mind,” she says slowly, and in her hesitance she looks suddenly very much like the true Mary Wardwell, “passing on my… apologies to Mary, if I might. I should like to atone,” she grimaces, like the very word _atone_ is distasteful, “for my… various missteps.”

“ _I_ will pass on the apologies on your behalf,” Zelda says firmly. “You, however, will go near that woman only over my dead and putrefying body.” 

Lilith gives her a knowing look. “She is not a child,” she says. “You cannot protect her from everything.”

“No,” Zelda says, “but I can protect her from this.”

“It is very easy to mistake obfuscation for protection,” Lilith says.

“I am all too aware,” Zelda says, steely, “but I will not be making the same mistake twice.”

~~~

For the second time that day, Mary Wardwell hears an unexpected knock at her front door.

This time it is not so much knocking as frantically pounding, hard enough even that the door vibrates ever so slightly in its frame. Mary slips a pressed flower bookmark into her paperback copy of _Wuthering Heights_ , frowning. “Who is it?” she asks, pleased when her voice sounds much stronger than she feels.

“Guess,” Zelda commands, her voice a husky growl.  
“Zelds, it’s nearly midnight,” she fusses, rushing to open the door and usher her girlfriend inside. “I’m only awake because I’ve got one chapter left and couldn’t stop myself. Is everything alright?”

“Just fine. Or rather, it will be.” Zelda seems distracted, her gaze winding down past Mary’s lips to rest at the place where her robe parts and the tissue-thin camisole underneath peeks out. Her fingers follow her line of sight, drawn like moth to flame, and trace a line down Mary’s chest. 

She shivers, still stuck in a gothic romance novel, and half expects Zelda to give her a lustful look and then flit away over the moors. Instead, her lover seems to be reenacting some sort of Romantic-era bodice-ripper. 

As Zelda pushes her up against the wall, Mary idly mutters, “Not to complain, but what brought this on?”

Mouth hot on Mary’s neck, Zelda whispers, “Nothing you need to worry yourself over,” and continues licking and nipping a path down to her clavicles. 

“But Zelds, what—are you alright? Did something… happen…?” Mary breathes, head thrown back, and it takes all of the focus she has left to craft the simple question. 

“Just a visit from an estranged acquaintance,” Zelda murmurs, and as soon as she has said it she feels Mary freeze. 

“Lilith?” Mary asks, quiet as a child. 

Her long fingernails feathering over the pale skin of Mary’s cleavage, Zelda nods. She had filled Mary in shortly after they reconnected on her complicated history with the demoness who once wore her skin. Though Mary Wardwell had no problem believing that Zelda preferred her own company to Lilith’s, it had taken no small amount of reassurance to convince Mary that Zelda’s physical attraction to her wasn’t just a leftover from the unholy goddess. Luckily for them both, an impassioned Zelda Spellman could be very persuasive. “She wanted to apologize, among _other_ things.” 

Mary looks a bit shocked at the mention of Lilith’s apology, but quickly regains her composure when she realizes why Zelda is really here. “So you came to check on me… or to claim me as yours?”

“Perhaps,” Zelda says into Mary’s right ear, still so bothered by the mixture of rage and arousal swirling in her core as to be completely unbothered that she has been so easily figured out. 

Mary smiles, amused and a bit flattered.

“Hope you don’t mind,” Zelda says seriously, pulling back to meet her girlfriend’s eyes. 

“Not a bit,” Mary confesses, already sufficiently riled up from the witch’s brief attentions. “Please, carry on.” 

Later, they lie side by side in Mary’s small bed half-dozing, Mr. Paws contentedly curled up at their feet. “Zelda,” Mary whispers.

“Mmm?” Zelda says, eyes still closed.

“Does she want to see me?” Mary asks.

Zelda yawns and turns over, nuzzling her face into Mary’s neck. “Does who want to see you, darling?” she murmurs.

“Lilith,” Mary says, running hands through Zelda’s reddish-gold curls in an attempt to soothe her prior to what could potentially be a contentious discussion. “Does she want to see me?”

Zelda sits up and eyes Mary warily for a few moments before speaking. “Yes,” she finally concedes. “Do _you_ wish to see _her_?”

Mary offers her a distracted smile and hugs her legs to her chest. She rests her pointed chin on her knees, thinking. “I don’t know,” she finally says, and then laughs. “Sorry, that’s a terrible answer, isn’t it? Hardly an answer at all, really.”

“You’ve no need to apologize,” Zelda says, kissing her neck. “You don’t need to know yet.”

“I’m not ready now,” Mary says slowly, “but someday I might be, I think—if you go with me. Is that okay?”

“Of course it is,” Zelda says, tracing the line of Mary’s jaw with graceful, delicate fingers. “And besides, I wouldn’t hear of you going to her alone.”

“I just have… some questions,” Mary says haltingly, “about what—what happened to me, or part of me anyway, that I think only she could… well, answer. You’ve told me everything you could, and it filled in so many holes, but still—there’s so much I still don’t understand, and maybe I don’t _need_ to understand, but I also don’t know that I’ll ever feel like I can… like I can heal if I don’t at least _try_ to understand,” she is a bit breathless by the end of the sentence, her turquoise eyes welling.

“Mary,” Zelda says gently, “I don’t want you to feel that you owe me some sort of an explanation. This is entirely your choice,” she takes Mary’s hands into her own, “and I will support any decision you make, Mary, and I will be with you,” she says earnestly. “I promise.”

“And what if… what if she tries to—”

“If she attempts to so much as _breathe_ in your direction without your explicit consent, I will rend her limb from limb.”

Mary covers her mouth against a laugh, and when it becomes clear from Zelda’s face that she was not kidding, that only makes her laugh harder. Zelda chuckles in spite of herself, because she loves the layered music of their laughter, because she loves the dimples on Mary’s cheeks, because she loves how brave they’ve become together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **talkwordytome** : We know that Lilith references needing to meet with Sabrina in this fic because we needed there to be a reason for her to come to the Spellman house. Everything with Lilith and Sabrina at this point is so hugely complicated because of the season 3 finale insanity and we just did not feel like getting into the "two Sabrinas" thing. So, we figured y'all could just make your own assumptions. We personally decided that Lilith figured out that there are two Sabrinas but no one else has, but also it could work to imagine that between the end of season 3 and the start of this fic, the timeline stuff worked itself out. Feel free to just pick whatever makes the most sense to you and go with that.
> 
> **cjscullyjanewaygay (csiwholocked33)** : I'm just here to make our standard disclaimer: we ~~don't hate~~ LOVE one (1) demoness from Hell, but she did do some pretty fucked up stuff to Mary, and we wanted to give her a chance to atone for that. I myself read Zelith {a.k.a. Madam Spellman} fic nearly every day, and am endlessly here for our two favorite bitchy witches bettering and softening each other between heated trysts and dismantling the patriarchy of the Church of Night; that said, my dear girlfriend has also warmed me significantly to the tender sweetness of this pairing, and my gay ass is here for any Michelle Gomez character who wants to make out with Miranda Otto.


	7. "and we will never be afraid again"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And when we first came here,  
>  We were cold and we were clear  
> With no colours in our skin  
> Until we let the spectrum in_  
> \--Florence + the Machine, “Spectrum”
> 
> or, in which the witch Zelda Spellman and the mortal Mary Wardwell finally get the happy ending they deserve.

The milky water laps at Zelda’s pale skin as she slides into the bathtub, entwining her legs with Mary’s and humming as the warmth sinks into her bones. Flower petals and herb sprigs from Hilda’s garden—rose and jasmine for sensuality, lavender and chamomile for calming—float gently on the water’s surface. Mary, for her part, is frozen with her wine glass to her lips and her eyes fixed on the place where the liquid meets the lower curve of Zelda’s breast.

“Mary…?” Zelda says softly, and when the other woman still doesn’t stir from her hypnotized stare, she scrapes her toenails ever so gently down her arm. 

Mary starts, blinking as she sets the now-empty wine glass onto the tile floor. “Sorry, dear,” she mumbles, fighting a smile. She seems to know she’s been caught, but after almost two years together—save those dreadful months apart—Zelda can tell that she doesn’t really mind. “You’re just so… _soft._ ”

Zelda purses her lips against a smile of her own, pushing her chest out unselfconsciously. “You mean… here?” she says teasingly, scooping a handful of water over her breasts and letting it drip down. 

“Exactly. Among other places,” Mary admits. She traces her fingers down the angle of Zelda’s cheekbone, leaving a trail of translucent droplets. 

Her fingertips are warm, the bath is warm, and Zelda does what anyone would: she leans forward and grabs Mary by the shoulders, kissing her with delicious fervor. She pulls the brunette into the crescent of her spread legs, the length of their torsos pressed together. 

They stay like this for a while, pulling their mouths apart only for Zelda to nip and kiss down her girlfriend’s neck. She whispers praises against the mortal woman’s skin, confessing her love over and over as if she is still making up for their lost time. 

Mary sighs contentedly, a shiver running up her spine. “Zel—Zelda,” she says. 

“Hmm?”

“I… let me go get something, alright love? You stay here, I’ll be right back.”

Zelda waits as instructed in the fragrant water, but fifteen minutes go by and then twenty, and she begins to grow impatient. “Mary?” she calls. “Are you planning on returning during this same epoch, or should I assume that I’m to remain in this rapidly cooling bath for the duration?”

When thirty more seconds have passed and Mary still hasn’t answered, Zelda rolls her eyes and pulls the plug from the drain. She grabs her towel from where it’s draped on the brass warmer and dries herself off, piles her hair into a loose bun and wraps a smaller towel around it. She puts on her favorite silk kimono and ties its satin sash. Then she examines herself closely in the mirror: without makeup on, the cinnamon-colored freckles scattered across her nose stand out, and so do the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, the ones that Mary insists on calling laugh lines of all ridiculous things. She’s largely pleased with the image she presents, though; she looks damn good after nearly three centuries. For the first time in her long life, lately she has found solace in the fact that she is already a middle-aged witch, because it means that she likely won’t outlive Mary by more than a century or so. With any luck, it won’t even be that long—Lilith’s magic already seems to have slowed Mary’s aging ever so slightly, and Hecate knows the First Witch owes Mary Wardwell and the Spellmans a sizable favor. 

When she starts to open the bathroom door, Zelda is stopped by Mary’s shouts of, “Wait, wait! Don’t come out!”

“Mary,” Zelda says, exasperated, “it’s humid as a rainforest in here, and my hair is going to be an unadulterated nightmare if I stay in here a minute more; whatever is the matter?”

“Nothing, Zelds, I swear, it just…” Mary trails off, her voice quivering as Zelda hears a series of quick shuffling noises and something clattering to the floor. 

“Mary, you’re beginning to worry me; I’m just going to—”

Zelda stops short when she clears the door frame. Her room—their room, as she has come to think of it—is full of candles, every color and size the Spellman medicine cabinet has to offer, every one of them lit. Mary is kneeling in the center of the rug, one of Zelda’s lace-trimmed slips clinging to her still-damp form. In her upturned hands is a small velvet box. 

Mary’s cerulean eyes flicker open, and her breath shudders as she flips off the box’s lid. Inside is a ring, a polished garnet the size of a pea set in a ring of creamy pearls on a gold band. Her hands are shaking. 

“You don’t have to say anything, and I know you don’t have a happy history with the institution of marriage so it doesn’t even have to mean that, I just needed to… I had to do something, because I can’t bear to be without you ever again. I love you, Zelda Phiona Spellman.”

“Are you asking me to—”

“Only if you want to, only if you’re ready.”

“I… yes.” Zelda surprises herself with her quick answer. “Of course I do, Mary.” Her voice wavers, and she falls to her knees in front of Mary. “I love you.”

“Oh thank heavens,” Mary whispers, falling into Zelda’s arms. They’re both laughing then, and crying a little, though when they tell Hilda the story that night Zelda unequivocally denies the happy tears that streak her face. Mary sits back and slips the ring onto Zelda’s finger: a perfect fit, thanks to all the careful measurements she took of her other jewelry in the months prior. 

“It’s gorgeous, Mary,” Zelda sniffs, admiring the way the wine-dark gem glows when it catches a ray of window light. 

“I got it at that antique mall in town, the one I dragged you to every few weeks until you discovered that booth full of animal bones?”

“That is an excellent booth,” Zelda allows, and Mary giggles. 

Zelda clasps both of Mary’s hands in hers and pulls her down to the rug. They lie on their sides looking at each other until Mary’s tears begin again, at which point Zelda breaks their gaze with a fond eye roll. She wraps the small woman in her arms and smooths her hair, still wet from the bath. “My darling, weepy fiancée,” she mutters into her temple, and Mary laughs again. 

It is the best sound Zelda’s ever heard. She kisses her like she could swallow the sound and fill her soul with it, like if she can incorporate some part of this woman she loves into herself and keep her forever, perhaps the rest doesn’t matter. Mary kisses her back, and she knows that it doesn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, friends! We hope you enjoyed it :D


End file.
